John Roberts
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John Glover Roberts, Jr. (born January 27, 1955) is the seventeenth and current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005, Roberts generally votes with the conservative wing of the court. Before joining the Court, he was a judge on the D.C. Circuit for two years, having previously spent fourteen years in private law practice and serving in the United States Department of Justice and Office of the White House Counsel during the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
Education
He attended Harvard College, graduating with an A.B. in history summa cum laude in three years, before attending Harvard Law School, was the managing editor of the Harvard Law Review, and graduated with his J.D. magna cum laude.
Early legal career
After law school, Roberts served as a clerk for Judge Henry Friendly on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals for one year. From 1980 to 1981, he clerked for then-Associate Justice William 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. From 1982 to 1986, Roberts served as Associate Counsel to the President under White House Counsel Fred Fielding.
Roberts entered private law practice in 1986 as an associate at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Hogan & Hartson, but left to serve in the George H. W. Bush administration as Deputy Solicitor General from 1989 to 1993. During this time, Roberts argued 39 cases for the government before the Supreme Court, prevailing in 25 of them. He represented 18 states in United States v. Microsoft.
In 1992, George H. W. Bush nominated Roberts to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but no Senate vote was held, and Roberts' nomination expired when Bush left office after losing the 1992 presidential election. Roberts returned to Hogan & Hartson as a partner and became the head of the firm's appellate practice, in addition to serving as an adjunct faculty member at the Georgetown University Law Center.
U.S. Supreme Court
Nomination and confirmation
On July 19, 2005, President Bush nominated Roberts to the Supreme Court to fill a vacancy that would be left by the announced retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Roberts was the first Supreme Court nominee since Stephen Breyer in 1994.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist died on September 3, 2005 while Roberts' confirmation was still pending before the Senate. Shortly thereafter, on September 6, Bush withdrew Roberts's nomination as O'Connor's successor and announced Roberts' new nomination to the position of Chief Justice. Bush asked the Senate to expedite Roberts' confirmation hearings in order to fill the vacancy by the beginning of the Supreme Court's session in early October.
On September 22 the Senate Judiciary Committee approved Roberts' nomination by a vote of 13-5, with Senators Ted Kennedy, Richard Durbin, Charles Schumer, Joe Biden and Dianne Feinstein casting the dissenting votes. Roberts was confirmed by the full Senate on September 29, passing by a margin of 78-22.
Notable rulings
Parents v. Seattle School District
In June, 2007, Chief Justice Roberts authored the plurality opinion in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1.
At issue was whether it was constitutionally permissible for a public school district, and particularly those that had not operated segregated schools in the past, to (1) classify students by race and (2) rely upon such racial classifications in making school assignments.
The school districts involved voluntarily adopted student assignment plans that relied upon race to determine which public schools certain children may attend. The Seattle school district classified children as white or nonwhite, and the Jefferson County (Louisvile, KY) school district as black or “other.” In Seattle, this racial classification was used to allocate slots in oversubscribed high schools. In Jefferson County, it was used to make certain elementary school assignments and to rule on transfer requests. In each case, the school districts relied upon an individual student's race in assigning that student to a particular school, so that the racial balance at the school fell within a predetermined range based on the racial composition of the school district as a whole. Parents of students denied assignment to particular schools under these plans solely because of their race brought suit, contending that allocating children to different public schools on the basis of race violated the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection.
Majority opinion
In writing for the plurality, Chief Justice Roberts took the following positions:
"Here the racial balance the districts seek is a defined range set solely by reference to the demographics of the respective school districts. This working backward to achieve a particular type of racial balance, rather than working forward from some demonstration of the level of diversity that provides the purported benefits, is a fatal flaw under our existing precedent."
Roberts referenced the following cases in order to affirm his position:
- Freeman, 503 U.S.
- Richmond v. J.A. Croson, Co.
- Bakke, 438 U.S.
Interpretation
Accepting racial balancing as a compelling state interest would justify the imposition of racial proportionality throughout American society, contrary to our repeated recognition that “[a]t the heart of the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection lies the simple command that the Government must treat citizens as individuals, not as simply components of a racial, religious, sexual or national class." as was stated in Miller v. Johnson.
- The principle that racial balancing is not permitted is one of substance, not semantics. Racial balancing is not transformed from “patently unconstitutional” to a compelling state interest simply by relabeling it “racial diversity.”
Simply because the school districts may seek a worthy goal does not mean they are free to discriminate on the basis of race to achieve it, or that their racial classifications should be subject to less exacting scrutiny.
References
Portions of this article have been taken and edited from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Copyright Notice can be found here.
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