Harvard University.
Harvard Law School.
Roberts is sworn in as Chief Justice by Justice John Paul Stevens in the East Room of the White House, September 29, 2005.
Barack Obama being administered the oath of office by Roberts a second time on January 21, 2009.
Swearing-In Cermony For Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, August 7, 2010, Washington, DC.
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts (L-R), Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan, January 30, 2018 in Washington, D.C.
U.S. Supreme Court Justices Pose For Group Photo, September 29, 2009, Washington, DC.
John Roberts appears in the background, as President Bush announces his nomination of Roberts for the position of Chief Justice.
Roberts is sworn in as Chief Justice by Justice John Paul Stevens in the East Room of the White House, September 29, 2005.
John Roberts appears in the background, as President Bush announces his nomination of Roberts for the position of Chief Justice.
Barack Obama being administered the oath of office by Roberts a second time on January 21, 2009.
Harvard University.
Harvard Law School.
Swearing-In Cermony For Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, August 7, 2010, Washington, DC.
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts (L-R), Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan, January 30, 2018 in Washington, D.C.
U.S. Supreme Court Justices Pose For Group Photo, September 29, 2009, Washington, DC.
Mr. Roberts was born in Buffalo, New York, United States, on January 27, 1955. He is the only son of John G. "Jack" Roberts Sr. and Rosemary Podrasky Roberts. In 1959, the family moved to Long Beach, Indiana where John grew up with his three sisters, Kathy, Peggy and Barbara.
John Roberts was an excellent student and athlete. He studied five years of Latin (in four years), some French, and was known generally for his devotion to his studies. He was captain of the football team (he later described himself as a "slow-footed linebacker"), and was a regional champion in wrestling. He participated in choir and drama, co-edited the school newspaper, and served on the athletic council and the executive committee of the student council.
He attended Notre Dame Elementary School in Long Beach and in 1973 Mr. Roberts graduated at the top of his high school class from La Lumiere School, a Catholic boarding school in LaPorte, Indiana. Among other extracurricular activities, Roberts wrestled, was captain of the football team and served on the student council.
After graduating from high school, Roberts was accepted into Harvard University, earning his tuition by working in a steel mill during the summer. After receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree summa cum laude in 1976, Roberts entered Harvard Law School and graduated with his Juris Doctor degree (magna cum laude) from law school in 1979.
From 1980 to 1981 Mr. Roberts served as a law clerk to then-Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist on the United States Supreme Court. From 1981 to 1982 he served in the Reagan administration as a Special Assistant to U.S. Attorney General William French Smith and later as an aide to White House counsel Fred Fielding in the Reagan Administration (1982-1986). During these years, Roberts earned the reputation of being a political pragmatist, tackling some of the administration’s toughest issues (such as school busing) and matching wits with legal scholars and members of Congress.
After a brief stint in private practice, John Roberts served in the George H. W. Bush administration as Deputy Solicitor General from 1989 to 1992. In 1992 President Bush nominated Roberts to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. District, but no Senate vote was held and his nomination expired when Bush left office. So John Roberts returned to private practice the same year.
In November 2000, Mr. Roberts traveled to Florida to advise then-Governor Jeb Bush on the recount of ballots during the 2000 presidential election between Al Gore and Bush's brother, George W. Bush. In January 2003, President George W. Bush nominated John Roberts for a position on the U.S. Court of Appeals. He was confirmed in May by voice vote with little opposition. During his two-year tenure on the Court, Roberts wrote 49 opinions of which only two were not unanimous and he dissented in three others. He ruled on several controversial cases including Hedgepeth v. Washington Metro Transit Authority upholding the arrest of a 12-year-old girl for violating the “no eating food” policy at a Washington D.C. Metro station. Roberts was also part of the unanimous ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld upholding military tribunals’ trying terrorism suspects known as "enemy combatants." This decision was overturned in a 5-3 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2006 (Chief Justice Roberts excused himself from this case).
On July 19, 2005, following the retirement of Associate Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, President George W. Bush nominated John Roberts to fill her vacancy. John Roberts was confirmed by the U.S. Senate by a vote of 78-22 on September 29, 2005, and was sworn in hours later by Associate Justice John Paul Stevens.
One of his more controversial decisions came in 2010 when Chief Justice Roberts concurred with Justice Kennedy in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which declared that corporations have the same rights as average citizens engaging in political speech. Critics allege that the decision ignores the vast discrepancy between a corporation's finances and average citizen and destroys years of reform efforts to limit the power of special interest groups to influence the voters.
In June 2015 John Roberts ruled on two landmark legislative cases. Siding with the liberal wing of the Court and its swing vote Justice Anthony Kennedy in a 6-3 decision, Roberts reaffirmed the legality of Obamacare by supporting the law's subsidy programs in King v. Burwell. However, Roberts upheld his conservative views on the issue of gay marriage and voted against the Court's decision that made same sex marriage legal in all 50 states.
John Roberts is a prominent lawyer, who's made an outstanding career of a judge. Roberts became the youngest member of the Court, and the third-youngest person to have ever become Chief Justice (John Jay was appointed at age 44 in 1789 while John Marshall was appointed at age 45 in 1801). The Chief Justice is ranked 50th in the 2016 Forbes ranking of "The World's Most Powerful People."
According to a 16-page financial disclosure form John Roberts submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee prior to his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, his net worth was more than $6 million, including $1.6 million in stock holdings. At the time Roberts left private practice to join the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2003, he took a pay cut from $1 million a year to $171,800; as Chief Justice, his salary is $255,500 as of 2014. Roberts also holds a one-eighth interest in a cottage in Knocklong, an Irish village in County Limerick.
John Roberts and his family are Roman Catholics.
Mr. Roberts has been portrayed as a consistent advocate for conservative principles by analysts such as Jeffrey Toobin. Roberts's first term on the court concluded that his jurisprudence "appears to be strongly rooted in the discipline of traditional legal method, evincing a fidelity to text, structure, history, and the constitutional hierarchy. He exhibits the restraint that flows from the careful application of established decisional rules and the practice of reasoning from the case law. He appears to place great stock in the process-oriented tools and doctrinal rules that guard against the aggregation of judicial power and keep judicial discretion in check: jurisdictional limits, structural federalism, textualism, and the procedural rules that govern the scope of judicial review.
Quotations:
"Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules. They apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire."
"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
"By ensuring that no one in government has too much power, the Constitution helps protect ordinary Americans every day against abuse of power by those in authority."
"You can't fight for your rights if you don't know what they are."
"Judges have to have the humility to recognize that they operate within a system of precedent, shaped by other judges equally striving to live up to the judicial oath."
"If children do not understand the Constitution, they cannot understand how our government functions, or what their rights and responsibilities are as citizens of the United States."
"There is no better gift a society can give children than the opportunity to grow up safe and free - the chance to pursue whatever dreams they may have."
"I think judicial temperament is a willingness to step back from your own committed views of the correct jurisprudential approach and evaluate those views in terms of your role as a judge. It's the difference between being a judge and being a law professor."
"People, for reasons of their own, often fail to do things that would be good for them or good for society. Those failures - joined with the similar failures of others - can readily have a substantial effect on interstate commerce."
Mr. Roberts is a current fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a member of a number of organizations and clubs: Supreme Court Historical Society, Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, American Academy Appellate Lawyers, American Law Institute, Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, Metropolitan Club, Lawyers Club, Phi Beta Kappa.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences , United States
Supreme Court Historical Society , United States
Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court , United States
American Academy of Appellate Lawyers , United States
Robert Trent Jones Golf Club , United States
American Law Institute , United States
Metropolitan Club , United States
Lawyers Club , United States
Phi Beta Kappa , United States
Mr. Roberts is married to Jane Marie Sullivan, also an attorney, on July 27, 1996. They have two adopted children, Josephine ("Josie") and Jack Roberts.
