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John Glover Roberts Jr. (born January 27, 1955) is an American lawyer and jurist, serving since 2005 as the 17th Chief Justice of the United States.[3] Roberts has authored the majority opinion in several landmark cases, including National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, Shelby County v. Holder, and Riley v. California. He has been described as having a conservative judicial philosophy but, above all, as an institutionalist.[4][5] He has shown a willingness to work with the Supreme Court's liberal bloc, and after the retirement of Anthony Kennedy in 2018, he has been regarded as the primary swing vote on the Court.[6][7][8] Roberts is no longer the median vote since Amy Coney Barrett replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020.

Roberts grew up in northwestern Indiana and was educated in a series of Catholic schools. He studied history at Harvard University and then attended Harvard Law School, where he was managing editor of the Harvard Law Review. He served as a law clerk for Circuit Judge Henry Friendly and then-associate justice William Rehnquist before taking a position in the attorney general's office during the Reagan Administration. He went on to serve the Reagan Administration and the George H. W. Bush Administration in the Department of Justice and the Office of the White House Counsel, during which he was nominated by George H. W. Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, but no vote on his nomination was held.[10] Roberts then spent 14 years in private law practice. During this time, he argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court.[11] Notably, he represented 19 states in United States v. Microsoft Corp.

Roberts became a federal judge in 2003, when President George W. Bush appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. During his two-year tenure on the D.C. Circuit, Roberts authored 49 opinions, eliciting two dissents from other judges, and authoring three dissents of his own. In 2005, Bush nominated Roberts to the Supreme Court, initially to be an associate justice to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Chief Justice William Rehnquist died shortly afterward, however, before Roberts's Senate confirmation hearings had begun. Bush then withdrew Roberts's nomination and instead nominated him to become Chief Justice, choosing Samuel Alito to replace O'Connor.

Early life and education

John Glover Roberts Jr. was born on January 27, 1955, in Buffalo, New York, the son of Rosemary (née Podrasky; 1929–2019) and John Glover "Jack" Roberts Sr. (1928–2008). His father had Irish and Welsh ancestry, and his mother was a descendant of Slovak immigrants from Szepes, Hungary.[14] He has an elder sister, Kathy, and two younger sisters, Peggy and Barbara.[15] Roberts spent his early childhood years in Hamburg, New York, where his father worked as an electrical engineer for the Bethlehem Steel Corporation at its large factory in Lackawanna.

In 1965, ten-year-old Roberts and his family moved to Long Beach, Indiana, where his father became manager of a new steel plant in nearby Burns Harbor.[17] Roberts attended La Lumiere School, a small but affluent and academically rigorous Catholic boarding school in La Porte, Indiana,[17][18] where he was captain of the school’s football team and was a regional champion in wrestling. He also participated in choir and drama, and co-edited the school newspaper. He graduated first in his class in 1973.

Roberts then studied history at Harvard University, entering with sophomore (second-year) standing based on his high academic achievement in high school.[19] One of his first papers, "Marxism and Bolshevism: Theory and Practice", won Harvard's William Scott Ferguson Prize for most outstanding essay by a sophomore history major,[19] and in his senior year his paper "The Utopian Conservative: A Study of Continuity and Change in the Thought of Daniel Webster" won a Bowdoin Prize.[20] Each summer he returned home to earn money working at the steel plant his father managed.[17] He graduated in 1976 with an A.B., summa cum laude, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.[21]

Roberts had originally planned to pursue a Ph.D. in history but ultimately decided to attend Harvard Law School instead. He became managing editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated in 1979 with a J.D. magna cum laude.

Early legal career

After graduating from law school, Roberts was a law clerk for judge Henry Friendly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1979 to 1980, then for justice (later chief justice in 1986) William Rehnquist of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1980 to 1981.

Following his clerkships, Roberts began working for the U.S. government in the Administration of President Ronald Reagan, first from 1981 to 1982 as a special assistant to U.S. Attorney General William French Smith, then from 1982 to 1986 as an associate with the White House Counsel.[17] He then entered private practice in Washington, D.C., as an associate at the law firm Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells) and worked in the field of corporate law.

In 1989, Roberts joined the Administration of president George H. W. Bush as Principal Deputy Solicitor General.[23] He served as the acting solicitor general for the case of Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. FCC when the solicitor general, Ken Starr, had a conflict of interest. In the case, Roberts argued against policies of the FCC intended to increase minority ownership of broadcast licenses, arguing that the racial preferences were unconstitutional. Roberts's decision to argue that a federal agency's policy was unconstitutional surprised many lawyers within the Solicitor General's office.[24][25][26] In 1992, Bush nominated Roberts to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, but no Senate vote was held, and Roberts's nomination expired at the end of the 102nd Congress.

Following Bush's defeat by Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential election, Roberts left government service and returned to Hogan & Hartson as a partner. He became the head of the firm's appellate practice, and also became an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. During this time, Roberts argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court, prevailing in 25 of them.[27] He represented 19 states in United States v. Microsoft.[12] Those cases include:

Courtesy – Wikipedia

- John Roberts

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