The Eyes of the Law: Chief Justice Roberts
Back in May, Jeffrey Toobin wrote a rather harsh appraisal of Chief Justice John Roberts. The title of Toobin’s New Yorker piece: No More Mr. Nice Guy.
Based on a recent celebrity sighting of Chief Justice Roberts, however, JGR still seems like a pretty nice guy. The sighting took place here in New York, and it was, interestingly enough, made by a fellow celebrity: Gay Talese, the critically acclaimed, bestselling author.
Visit the NYT’s City Room blog (via WSJ Law Blog) to read about Talese’s encounter with JGR, then come back.
Okay, are you back? Wasn’t that an awesome story? Doesn’t Chief Justice Roberts sound like a prince of a man?
Random medical commentary from a reader, after the jump.
As you may recall, back in July 2007, Chief Justice Roberts was hospitalized after experiencing a seizure. This led the medically-oriented reader who sent us Talese’s tale to inform us:
On a side note, if the Chief Justice has any concerns or if he remains under treatment to guard against future seizures, drinking alcohol is generally contraindicated for any anti-seizure medications. In fact, drinking alcohol (in this case, wine) can actually aggravate a seizure condition and negate the benefit of anti-seizure medication. Thus, this may mean he is not under treatment, does not take anti-seizure medication, or respectfully dissents from and remains non-compliant with his doctor’s medical advice.
To Jeffrey Toobin (and other non-fans of John Roberts): If you’d like to send Chief Justice Roberts a case of wine, you know where to reach him.
Waiter, There’s a Gavel in My Soup [City Room / New York Times via WSJ Law Blog]
Earlier: Chief Justice John Roberts: The Elephant in the SCOTUS Courtroom?
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prima donna
SHIT
Not so nice to take sides consistently with business and Christian fundamentalists over the majority of the country, but he did give backwashed wine to a public figure who could write nice things about him. OMG totally nice CJ Roberts!
"Prima Donna" who was recognized--unanimously--as the best legal writer and best advocate who ever appeared before the Court, before becoming its Chief Justice.
Read EPA v. Alaska and weep for the Red Dog Mine.
He is the man.
Holy fucking Christ? Is this really news? Was anyone really shocked? Does anyone really give a shit?
Fuck me for even reading after the bump.
It appears #3 is an intellectual cripple.
Good. I hope he has a seizure while driving. We need his tenure to be a short one.
7, I see what you mean by Hope and Change.
Bring Back Elie
Prima Donna is just a funny way to refer to the Chief Justice drinking an italian wine, while also commenting first on the thread. Sarcastic Double Entendre.
"The best way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
What rubbish. Any deep-thinking academic will tell you that we must racially discriminate in order to end racial discrimination.
Equality of outcomes, people. It's the only way.
Of course Lat wrote this post given its vapidity and utter lack of worth, meaning and depth. Hard to believe Lat actually graduated law school and practiced.
Um, excuse me, but this post has NOTHING to do with gay lawyers, gay marriage, or other issues involving homosexuality. What's it doing on this blog?
Now if he could only learn not to butcher the oath of office.
Oh come on. I can't stand Roberts' politics or how the haughty article was written, but that is still a pretty cool story.
Regurgitate news from other law blogs much?
11, you are an idiot. Roberts' last paragraph in PICS was a complete intellectual disaster. He distorted Brown, history and logic. He should be ashamed of himself.
Roberts' last graf:
The parties and their amici debate which side is more faithful to the heritage of Brown, but the position of the plaintiffs in Brown was spelled out in their brief and could not have been clearer: “[T]he Fourteenth Amendment prevents states from according differential treatment to American children on the basis of their color or race.” Brief for Appellants in Nos. 1, 2, and 4 and for Respondents in No. 10 on Reargument in Brown I, O. T. 1953, p. 15 (Summary of Argument). What do the racial classifications at issue here do, if not accord differential treatment on the basis of race? As counsel who appeared before this Court for the plaintiffs in Brown put it: “We have one fundamental contention which we will seek to develop in the course of this argument, and that contention is that no State has any authority under the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens.” Tr. of Oral Arg. in Brown I, p. 7 (Robert L. Carter, Dec. 9, 1952). There is no ambiguity in that statement. And it was that position that prevailed in this Court, which emphasized in its remedial opinion that what was “[a]t stake is the personal interest of the plaintiffs in admission to public schools as soon as practicable on a nondiscriminatory basis,” and what was required was “determining admission to the public schools on a nonracial basis.” Brown II, supra, at 300–301 (emphasis added). What do the racial classifications do in these cases, if not determine admission to a public school on a racial basis? Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin. The school districts in these cases have not carried the heavy burden of demonstrating that we should allow this once again—even for very different reasons. For schools that never segregated on the basis of race, such as Seattle, or that have removed the vestiges of past segregation, such as Jefferson County, the way “to achieve a system of determining admission to the public schools on a nonracial basis,” Brown II, 349 U. S., at 300–301, is to stop assigning students on a racial basis. The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.
One scholars' response:
Chief Justice Roberts’s discussion of Brown is also instructive, and disturbing, as a case study in judicial reasoning. The arguments Chief Justice Roberts made about Brown purported to be historical claims, in one instance about the positions of advocates in the early 1950s, in the other about what a case decided. Yet his discussion made little effort even to acknowledge the circumstances in which the arguments were made or in which Brown was decided, and his interpretation, perhaps accordingly, was entirely inconsistent with that historical context. In associating the lawyers who prevailed in Brown with modern day anticlassificationists, Chief Justice Roberts stretched and distorted the arguments the civil rights attorneys made, in part, by selectively lifting fragments of language from its context to attribute to them a claim they did not make. In claiming that Brown itself vindicates the anticlassificationist position, Chief Justice Roberts ignored that part of the decision which compels a contrary reading and relied on language excised from its context. Moreover, the Court overlooked Bolling v. Sharpe, Brown’s companion case, which suggested that some official uses of race were sustainable. Chief Justice Roberts’s discussion of Brown reconstructed history in a disingenuous way apparently to support the outcome those in the plurality favored. In building an equal protection jurisprudence based on false history, it camouflaged the constitutional arguments which really drove its analysis. The plurality’s approach thus raises concerns regarding the way in which Supreme Court decisions are reasoned and justified.
I hope Justice Roberts' seizure was not caused by drug or alcohol abuse.
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Best citation from his Alaska v. EPA brief: Mark Skok, Alaska’s Red Dog Mine: Beating the Odds, Minerals Today, at 8 (June 1991).
ATL Poll
What happens first
1. Roberts has another seizure
2. Sotomayor goes into a diabetic coma
3. Ginsburg dies
4. Thomas realises that he is black
5. Scalia loses the arrogance
17 = Joel K. Goldstein, Saint Louis University School of Law
17,
I'm on your side!
Seeking to end racial discrimination by refusing to racially discriminate is clearly illogical.
After all, it's the color of one's skin, not the content of one's character, that counts.
Toobin's a hack.
#17's a douche bag.
I met the Chief Justice after my 1L year on a study abroad program. He was nice enough to teach a 2 week course on the history of the Supreme Court. He seemed like a great guy.
7 - Wouldn't it be cool if his entire family in the car? That would be like 4 fewer Repuke voters!
/But seriously, you are a fucking scumbag.
Roberts IS a nice guy. It's only because the left has taken to demonizing the other side that they can no longer listen to, and learn from, opposing viewpoints.
This says plenty about JR. I'd have left the wine for the waiter and the kitchen to polish off after work. But why look out for the little guy, right?
I don't give a shit if he gave a bottle of wine to some dude at a fancy restaurant.
That's the whole point, retard. This tale fits right in with everything we know about this asshole:
This guy seems unbelievably nice on the outside, smiling, giving people things, polite, etc.
Then he is completely evil with his opinions, intellectually dishonest and an activist. as Toobin correctly pointed out, the most Republican-party imbedded justice in the history of the Supreme Court.
When the Supreme Court stopped the Seattle School District from forcing black students into only specific high schools solely on the basis of their race, that decision was obviously against the history and spirit of Brown v. Board of Education.
Number 21, your poll has two errors. Choices 4 and 5 will never happen.
"Toobin correctly pointed out, the most Republican-party imbedded justice in the history of the Supreme Court." Even if this were 100% true, it would only begin to make up for Souter. (Yes, a mistake that GHWB made, but still a big mistake.)
The left will never be satisfied until everyone is racially-segregated once again. They have been promoting racially-separated dorms on campuses for the past couple of decades, and obviously they support race-based courses which operate to segregate the student body when outside the dorms. And they demand declaration of one's race before even contemplating admission.
The left represents everything MLK, Jr. opposed.
Roberts is a complete phony.
Toobin is the real deal. He knows his shit. What he wrote was dead on.
Shame on you, Roberts. Jesus and God shall judge you for the way you have treated those who have less than you.
So . . . Dell’Orefice wound up with the empty wine bottle? Talk about a big bottom.
Maybe she stuck it in her Orefice.
33--
You're right. MLK, Jr. would love Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachman.
"Based on a recent celebrity sighting of Chief Justice Roberts, however, JGR still seems like a pretty nice guy. The sighting took place here in New York, and it was, interestingly enough, made by a fellow celebrity: Gay Talese, the critically acclaimed, bestselling author."
This was an awfully arranged sentence MysTTTal. Oops, I mean LaTTT.
Toobin and the other libs are morons if they thought that judicial minimalist/nice guy was synonymous with moderate, Kennedy/O'Connor style wishy-washiness. They were only projecting their hopes that he wouldn't be *gasp* conservative and their disappointment only shows their foolishness.
Plus, comments about how Roberts is "completely evil" (see poster above) really say more about the poster and how they view the role of SCOTUS rather than Roberts' jurisprudence.
@34 - the way he treated those who have less than him? WTF are you talking about?
"backwashed wine"
Somehow I doubt JGR and his wife were swigging it out of the bottle. WTF.
40:
Are you fucking serious with that question? How much education do you have?
42:
Seems likely 40 has more than you do...
The "medically oriented reader" who sent you the story is an idiot who knows nothing about neurology. Someone who has one seizure every 14 years might or might not be on medication, depending on test results that indicate how likely another seizure is. And it's certainly not true that you can't drink on all seizure drugs - the range of drugs varies greatly, and for there is every likelihood that Roberts is taking one that doesn't interact badly with alcohol.
34 is spot-on.
The great civil rights leaders, community organizers, and intellectuals of our day understand that the job of the Supreme Court is to interpret the Constiution so as to better those who have less at the expense of those who have more.
How do we know he drank anything - could be that his wife had few glasses and that was why the bottle was unfinished.
Claims that drinking in moderation is a risk factor for those taking anti-syncope/anti-seizure medications are unfounded. Feel free to examine the medical literature and unless you're talking about drunks or those suffering from "the DTs" you'll find that moderate alcohol intake is not associated with the condition; with or without medication.
Of course none of this will sway the modern Left because it has rejected the Enlightenment and reasons only from emotion; thus their incessant sneering lies.
"Affirmative Walrus"... LOL!
It all makes sense now.
"If we are to end discrimination we must institutionalize and enforce discrimination."
"If we are to end this recession caused by excessive debt we must take on vastly more debt."
I've fallen down the rabbit hole and understand liberals at last. Not sure what will happen once the shrooms run out but man it's all groovy in the meantime.
As soon as read something unequivocally positive written about C.J. Roberts, I knew that there was no way that Elie had written the post. Sure enough!
45:
Be an asshole if you want. But many decent justices (Brandeis, Marshall, Holmes, Brennan) believe that the role of the judiciary is in part to look out for the little guy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Why else would somebody want to be a judge?
Left wingers suck a fat one.
Keep up the work Chief Justice Roberts. We will get this country back to the way it should be, one step at a time!
52:
I agree. Let's stop all these annoying libs and minorities from taking over our country. Let's make sure that normal white people have all the power again. I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
45:
Forget about the Constitution. What about God's law? Roberts is a Catholic. One of the main tenants of Catholicism is to help those who have less than us. Roberts has done the exact opposite. He has betrayed his faith, and he will be judged some day by God and Jesus.
54, you obviously know nothing about the Bible or the Christian faith.
8 - if that was deadpan, you are a comic all-star. It works on so many levels!
54: None of us are in a position to cast judgment on CJR's immortal soul. Purporting to speak for God and/or Jesus makes you sound strident and foolish, and detracts from your credibility on the subject.
54, do "those who have less than us" include unborn fetuses?
Nobody who must out of necessity be addressed as "54" has credibility on any subject.
55:
How dare you criticize my faith. You obviously are not a believer. I've forgotten more about Catholicism than you'll ever know and I can tell you that Roberts' values and beliefs are inapposite to those of this immortal religion. Shame on Roberts and shame on you.
58:
OK. So Roberts' opinions comport with the church's teachings on abortion. I'll give you that. But what about the death penalty? What about poverty? What about police misconduct?
Abortion is a very minor part of showing respect for all life, and Roberts has failed miserably at that.
61, if you can pick and choose church teachings to support or not support (abortion), why can't others?
"You obviously are not a believer. I've forgotten more about Catholicism than you'll ever know..."
'Cause you know I'm a million times more humble than thou art!
51: "Be an asshole if you want. But many decent justices (Brandeis, Marshall, Holmes, Brennan) believe that the role of the judiciary is in part to look out for the little guy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Why else would somebody want to be a judge?"
In the Seattle busing case, the plaintiff was a single mother, and the defendant was the omnipotent Seattle School District with absolute power to force the plaintiff's kid to spend hours on a school bus each day. Which side is the "little guy" you are trying to protect?
51: "Be an asshole if you want. But many decent justices (Brandeis, Marshall, Holmes, Brennan) believe that the role of the judiciary is in part to look out for the little guy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Why else would somebody want to be a judge?"
In the Seattle busing case, the plaintiff was a single mother, and the defendant was the omnipotent Seattle School District with absolute power to force the plaintiff's kid to spend hours on a school bus each day. Which side is the "little guy" you are trying to protect?
13 - "...GAY Talese, the critically acclaimed, bestselling author..." duh
"Forget about the Constitution," says 54. There are other values that 54 thinks CJR should use to determine cases.
And so we get an unvarnished, honest statement of liberal jurisprudence.
67:
Absofuckinglutely. Scalia, Thomas, Alito and your other little buddies certainly reach outside the Constitution to come up with their ridiculous opinions, so why shouldn't everyone?
--54
i love the "social catholic" commentary -- the only way to worship is to use a position of public trust to advocate and order the transfer of wealth from haves to have nots. i suppose if you'd follows CJR around and he started beating up pan-handlers and spitting on street children, you might have a point. whatever the man's take on what the law and constitution require is a wholly separate issue from his personal charity. STFU, you make me sick.
i love the "social catholic" commentary -- the only way to worship is to use a position of public trust to advocate and order the transfer of wealth from haves to have nots. i suppose if you'd followed CJR around and he started beating up pan-handlers and spitting on street children, you might have a point. but whatever the man's take on what the law and constitution require, they are a wholly separate issue from his personal views on -- and commitment to -- catholic charity. STFU, you make me sick. go back and read the bible, not just what those jesuits spoon-fed you in "social justice" class.
62:
What the fuck are you talking about? I'm extremely pro-life, but I'm not inconsistently pro-life like you right-wing assholes. I respect all life, and am against the death penalty and unnecessary wars, as I must be if I want to be a true Catholic.
--61
70:
You wrote:
"whatever the man's take on what the law and constitution require, they are a wholly separate issue from his personal views on -- and commitment to -- catholic charity"
Not true.
The Church specifically calls on those Catholics in the position of public trust to live all parts of their lives in full compliance with their faith. If there is a conflict between law and faith, faith must win out. It is for that reason that certain bishops have called on their parishes to refuse communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians like Kerry and Pelosi. I agree with that position but I also believe that Roberts and other non-pro-life Catholics are traitors to their religion.
72,
i think you're misinterpreting "living in compliance with their faith." roberts' personal charity is living in line with his catholic faith, and that is not undermined by his personal opinions that governments may not coerce charity through confiscatory taxation schemes. we can disagree about the utility/propriety of "remedial" discrimination, but roberts' rejection of it does not constitute apostasy.
furthermore, there seems to be confusion as to the role of judges here. the chief justice is supposed to determine the meaning of the law, within the constitution, and to determine what those meanings and limitations entail in terms of proscriptions on governmental or private action. the courts in which judges sit ought never ponder the question of whether we should be our brothers' keepers, and whether we are called to be good samaritans to each other. the role of courts is to determine whether the law and constitution permit or prohibit such actions. again, robert's (and scalia's, and thomas', and kennedy's, and alito's) opinion that such actions are not required by law hardly comprises heresy or apostasy.
the constitution makes a clear distinction between the political and judicial branches. since a refresher is obviously needed, the former makes policy while the latter does not. you are correct in condemning politicians who shape public policy (and incentivize private action) to be hostile to the tenets of their catholicism. painting judges with the same brush is inappropriate.
72,
Agreed.
Roberts should disregard the Constitution and embrace judicial activism in the name of the underprivileged, the under-represented, the socially disadvantaged, the...the * nods off *
* snorts, wakes up * Unless, of course, his activist views were to conflict with progressivism. Then he'd be violating the Constitution.
68,
It is odd that one would think a constitution predicated upon segregating political power and preventing potential governmental coercion in the lives of the citizenry should somehow come be interpreted as finding its principal mandate in comprehensive social engineering (equality of outcomes in economic and political spheres).
If the Court should look to norms exogenous to the Constitution to effectuate policy goals, the question nevertheless remains of which set(s) of norms to give legal credence. In response to comments by the likes of 54/60, I suggest as a starting point for discovering and articulating those norms Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism to understand this country's heritage, rights, laws, and socio-economic order.
Roberts always thinks long and hard about a case........ before coming down on the side of big biz and against crim defendants.
*looks to the left* intolerant snobs *looks to the right* more intolerant snobs *shrugs and goes back to the middle*
77 is a bigot.
75:
Tell that to Roberts, who has "socially eingineered" his opinions to make sure that corporations win 100% of the time, regardless of the facts and the law.
74:
Roberts already has embraced judicial activism. He's the most activist judge on the court. He's engineered his opinions to ensure that the far right wins 100% of the time.
75 here,
79/80, even if that were true, which it isn't, no one would claim that that is Robert's principal mandate vis-a-vis the entire Constitution. Claiming that the Roberts is the most activist judge on the court belies your complete ignorance (in the truest sense of the term) as to what 74 and I have suggested liberal justices (particularly Breyer and his "Living Constitution" model) attempt to accomplish.
Did you go to law school? Did you read SCOTUS cases?
FAIL.
Lat, 25 & 27, personal charm has nothing to do with being a dick on public policy. Don't act like the two are in opposition. See: GWBush. 29 hit it. And 52, lick a dank asshole.
69, what the fuck ever, Jesus was the original socialist. Deal with it. 73: "the [political branch] makes policy while the [judicial branch] does not." lol, you keep telling yourself that. 77, stop thinking that political thought exists along a single dimension.
And 13, John Roberts is seriously closeted. This post was totally On Blog Topic.