As of last Friday, SCOTUStoday (our weekday publication — subscribe here!) completed offering transient biographies of every chief justice of the US, beginning with John Jay and ending with John Roberts. In gentle of that achievement (and based mostly on reader requests), we figured we’d present a synopsis of every biography in a single place, with the intention to not solely impress your folks (and what associates they have to be!) however reply a query Roberts himself has admitted that he’s struggled with. So, with out additional ado, meet every of the 17 males who’ve led the Supreme Courtroom.
Chief Justice John Marshall could get all the eye, however John Jay was there first. A profitable lawyer in non-public apply, Jay first made his mark on historical past because the tensions between Nice Britain and the colonies escalated after which exploded. Amongst different duties, Jay chaired New York’s Committee for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies, and directed brokers to reveal Loyalist schemes, which included a plot to assassinate Basic George Washington. He additionally joined secret talks in Paris in 1782, securing phrases within the (appropriately-named) Treaty of Paris that formally ended the Revolutionary Struggle.
In 1789, George Washington appointed Jay as the primary chief justice. On the time this was a moderately sleepy job: the nascent court docket determined simply 4 instances in six years. Having comparatively little to do, Jay was capable of continue his diplomatic duties, together with performing as secretary of international affairs and negotiating the 1794 “Jay Treaty” with Britain (which handled unresolved points following American independence). As for Jay’s precise court docket duties, maybe his most well-known determination was in Chisholm v. Georgia, written in 1793, during which the court docket declared that sovereignty rested with the individuals as a unified nation, not particular person states, thus permitting residents to sue states in federal court docket. (This ruling prompted ratification of the Eleventh Amendment limiting fits in opposition to states.)
In 1795, Jay resigned from the court docket to function New York’s governor, the place he signed a 1799 act for the gradual abolition of slavery within the state. And though in 1800 President John Adams provided to nominate him once more as chief justice, Jay turned it down, stating the court docket lacked the “power, weight, and dignity” important for public respect (or at the very least the respect that John Jay deserved).
The story of John Rutledge, the nation’s second chief justice, is a moderately miserable one. However it didn’t begin out that approach: Rutledge started his political profession as a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress, railing in opposition to Parliament’s taxes (oh, how they’d rail in these days!). He then served as South Carolina’s first president and governor from 1776-1778 and 1779-1782, with broad emergency powers – he might successfully do anything but execute a citizen with out trial. Rutledge additionally performed a major function within the nation’s founding as a delegate on the 1787 Constitutional Conference, the place he chaired the Committee of Element, producing the first complete draft of the U.S. Structure (written as a report).
In 1789, President George Washington tapped Rutledge as one of many unique affiliate justices. Rutledge didn’t hear a single Supreme Courtroom case, nevertheless, and a 12 months later he resigned after having to ride the grueling Southern Circuit. However Rutledge was not executed with the court docket. When John Jay resigned as chief in 1795, Rutledge lobbied Washington for the highest spot and was made chief throughout a congressional recess. Sadly, Rutledge virtually instantly burned his bridges with a fiery speech disparaging the Jay Treaty with Britain as a “demise warrant” for the nation, and that he’d “moderately see [the president] useless than to see him signal [it].” When Congress reconvened, Federalist senators, already whispering of Rutledge’s monetary woes and obvious depressive spells (doubtless exacerbated by his spouse’s death in 1792), denied his nomination to function chief justice 14-10, the primary rejection of a Supreme Courtroom nominee in Senate historical past. In 1795, Rutledge tried to drown himself off a Charleston dock however was reportedly saved by two slaves who noticed him within the water.
Actually, we didn’t keep in mind this fellow was a chief justice when placing these bios collectively. And that irony will not be misplaced on us, provided that we entitled his nearer look “The Reasonably Memorable Chief Justice Ellsworth.” Whereas “memorable” could also be false promoting when it comes to his court docket tenure, the identical can’t be mentioned of his broader contribution to American politics. On the Constitutional Conference of 1787, when the conference couldn’t agree on how states needs to be represented within the new authorities, Ellsworth helped engineer the “Great Compromise” (often known as the Connecticut Compromise). As some doubtless keep in mind from their highschool American historical past courses, the deal established a bicameral legislature: a Home with proportional illustration (good for big states) and a Senate with two members per state (good for small states). Ellsworth was subsequently elected one in every of Connecticut’s first two senators. Whereas in that function, he wrote the Judiciary Act of 1789 – which established the construction and jurisdiction of the federal court docket system and created the place of lawyer basic.
In March 1796, Washington nominated Ellsworth to be chief justice. Maybe most notably, Ellsworth favored issuing per curiam opinions moderately than the court docket’s apply of “seriatim” ones, the place every justice wrote their very own separate opinion. In 1799, President John Adams sent Ellsworth, whereas he was chief justice, to France as a diplomat to barter with Napoleon an finish to the “Quasi-Struggle,” an undeclared naval battle between that nation and the US. He did so efficiently. However whereas overseas, Ellsworth fell ailing. Citing his poor well being, he resigned from the Supreme Courtroom in December 1800.
John Marshall was the one chief justice who we devoted two nearer appears to be like to, and for good purpose. Each his life earlier than turning into chief and his time occupying the middle seat have been momentous.
Because the oldest of 15 kids, Marshall was raised in rural Virginia in a two-room log cabin (due to course he was). In attending the native faculty he supposedly walked 60 miles by himself (due to course he did). At 19, Marshall left house to serve within the Virginia Continental regiment. After the battle’s finish, he joined the Virginia Home of Delegates in 1782, supporting each ratification of the Structure and stronger federal powers – positions that clashed with these of his second cousin once removed Thomas Jefferson, who strongly favored states’ rights.
Roughly seven months after assuming the workplace of Secretary of State in June 1800, Marshall was appointed chief justice by outgoing President John Adams. As chief, Marshall misplaced no time in making his mark: In the course of the first session during which he presided over the court docket, he supposedly launched the custom of black judicial robes.
Marshall’s most well-known case stays – for good purpose – Marbury v. Madison, the place in 1803 the court docket declared that a part of the Judiciary Act of 1789 was unconstitutional and, in doing so, established the facility of judicial overview. However this was removed from Marshall’s solely notable determination. His opinion in 1819’s McCulloch v. Maryland helped set up the supremacy of federal legislation over state legislation by holding that Maryland couldn’t tax the Second Financial institution of the US and affirmed Congress’ implied powers beneath the necessary and proper clause.
Past penning such landmark opinions (he participated in over 1,000 selections and wrote more than 500), Marshall continued to host the justices for dinners in a D.C. boarding home – and would quip that the court docket’s huge jurisdiction surely included some wet spot, justifying a drink.
Roger Taney was a sophisticated man with a horrific legacy.
Previous to serving on the court docket, Taney was (like most of his predecessors) a proficient lawyer and profitable politician. Particularly, he served multiple terms within the Maryland Home of Delegates as a member of the Federalist social gathering and led a bit of the Federalists that supported the Struggle of 1812 in opposition to Britain. After shifting to Baltimore, Taney was appointed the lawyer basic of Maryland in 1827 – and staunchly supported (and campaigned for) each President Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Get together, main Jackson to call Taney as U.S. lawyer basic in 1831. (For a short period of time, Taney simultaneously acted as Jackson’s secretary of battle.) Taney, like Jackson, was a ferocious critic of the Second Financial institution of the US – and after Jackson nominated him for treasury secretary in 1833, helped to cripple the establishment, requiring that funds be withdrawn from the financial institution and thereby “sealing [its] destiny.”
In 1836, Taney was nominated by Jackson because the court docket’s fifth chief justice. Right now, Taney’s notoriety comes from his 1857 determination in Dred Scott v. Sandford, the place he dominated that 1) Scott, an enslaved man who hung out in free territory, was not free; 2) Black People, whether or not enslaved or free, were not and could not be residents; and three) the Missouri Compromise – which banned slavery in sure territories – was unconstitutional. The choice intensified the abolition motion and aggravated tensions between the states and the federal authorities, culminating within the Civil Struggle. The tip of Taney’s profession on the court docket was a contentious one (to place it mildly), during which he and Lincoln sparred over the president’s authority through the Civil Struggle – with Taney’s efforts ending in defeat.
Like another chiefs, what Chase did earlier than getting on the court docket was arguably extra spectacular than his tenure on the court docket.
Believing from an early age that the Structure was fundamentally anti-slavery, Chase led Ohio’s abolitionist Liberty Get together – creating an antislavery coalition that will finally contribute to a U.S. Senate nomination in 1848, the place Chase would serve one (six-year) time period representing Ohio. Following this, he was elected as governor of the state in 1855. As governor, Chase supported anti-slavery actions, public schooling, jail reform, and ladies’s rights, and was reelected to the Senate in 1860 – however left his Senate seat after simply two or three days to turn out to be secretary of the treasury, to which he was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln. Chase served as treasury secretary till 1864, when he resigned after a collection of political and personal conflicts with Lincoln.
Lincoln didn’t take it too personally, and shortly thereafter, Chase was nominated by him to the place of chief justice following the demise of Taney. As chief justice, Chase ruled within the 1868 case of Texas v. White that the “Structure, in all its provisions, appears to be like to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States” and the Southern states had due to this fact by no means departed from the Union. However Chase’s coronary heart was probably not within the middle seat: In 1868, Chase tried and failed in a presidential bid, and was defeated once more in 1872 on a second run. Chase additionally presided over the 1868 impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson (he was acquitted by one vote).
Chase’s face nonetheless seems on the $10,000 invoice, though one could price you upwards of $480,000.
Morrison Waite had at the very least two issues going for him: impressive facial hair – and an important nickname (“Mott”). Much less spectacular was his early political profession, which consisted of two unsuccessful runs for the U.S. Home of Representatives, in 1846 and 1862. Then, in 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Waite to a world fee in Geneva tasked with settling U.S. claims in opposition to Britain from the Civil Struggle. Apparently impressed by the outcomes, Grant appointed Waite as chief justice – although only after several others passed.
The Waite court docket made its mark enhancing nationwide financial authority (normally, its decisions on financial regulation supported federal commerce powers), and narrowly decoding the Reconstruction Amendments, prioritizing state sovereignty over federal energy. Additionally of observe: in 1888, it upheld Alexander Graham Bell’s phone patents in what are often called the Telephone Cases.
Regardless of having a breakdown in 1885 from overwork and the court docket’s huge backlog (Waite appealed publicly for aid for the general public in opposition to the “tedious and oppressive delays” of federal justice in 1887), he refused retirement. He died three years later.
Though in the present day comparatively unknown, Melville Fuller presided over a few of the most vital instances within the historical past of the Supreme Courtroom. (He additionally instituted the apply of getting the justices shake palms earlier than non-public conferences and earlier than taking the bench.)
Fuller handed the bar after a short stint (six months) at Harvard Legislation College, after which moved west to manage Stephen Douglas’ 1860 presidential marketing campaign. Fuller additionally served within the Illinois Home of Representatives for 2 years, was elected president of the state bar affiliation, and was a delegate to the Illinois constitutional conference of 1862. (His Illinois Home colleagues reportedly have been left sad when Fuller publicly opposed their gold pens as a waste of public spending.)
President Grover Cleveland nominated Fuller to be chief justice in April 1888. The Senate took three months to verify him, with concerns over his perceived favoritism in direction of companies and questionable loyalty to the Union. Two different rather unusual subjects got here up throughout Fuller’s affirmation: his facial hair (Fuller sported quite a mustache), and his penchant for poetry. In response to the Journal of Supreme Court History: “articles asserted that Fuller was a mediocre beginner poet and, as such, was not match to take a seat on the excessive Bench.” Regardless of these obvious lapses, Fuller was confirmed, and took his judicial oath in October 1888.
A few of Fuller’s better-known instances embody the controversial Lochner v. New York (which struck down – on the premise of substantive due course of – New York’s legislation making it unlawful for bakers to work over a sure variety of hours) and United States v. E.C. Knight Co., which restricted – beneath the interstate commerce clause – the scope of the Sherman Antitrust Act that Congress handed to break up unfair monopolies. However by far essentially the most infamous case of the Fuller court docket got here in 1896 with Plessy v. Ferguson, which held that state-mandated segregation legal guidelines weren’t unconstitutional as long as the separate lodging have been “equal” for the “white and coloured races,” and which was not reversed till Brown v. Board of Education virtually 60 years later. Fuller joined within the majority determination.
Fuller served on the court docket for roughly 22 years, and died in workplace from heart disease in July 1910.
The first affiliate justice to be elevated to chief justice, White has the excellence of being nominated by two separate presidents: Grover Cleveland (as an affiliate justice) and William Howard Taft (as chief).
When the Civil Struggle broke out, the longer term chief justice, then 15 years outdated and born and raised in southern Louisiana, joined the Confederate Army. He was captured twice, and imprisoned in New Orleans – the place he would stay for a couple of month till Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. Thereafter, White started training legislation, briefly served within the Louisiana state senate, and was appointed to the Louisiana Supreme Courtroom in 1878 (although was kicked out shortly after his appointment for not assembly the minimal age requirement of 35 – he was 33). Ten years later, White was chosen by the state legislature to characterize Louisiana within the U.S. Senate, partly resulting from his function in abolishing the corrupt Louisiana Lottery, which had been granted a constitution in 1868 based mostly on supposed bribes to state legislatures.
White’s best-known instances embody these on race and civil rights. He authored the ruling in Guinn v. United States that rejected sure “grandfather clauses,” which allowed these whose grandfathers had been capable of vote earlier than the fifteenth modification was ratified to register to vote with out first passing a literacy check. As together with his predecessor, nevertheless, White joined the bulk in Plessy v. Ferguson. His court docket additionally restrained war-related speech (holding that beneath Debs, Schenck, and Abrams, speech or actions interfering with the battle may very well be criminalized), and the “Insular Cases,” which held that just some Invoice of Rights protections apply inside the U.S. territories and remain in effect to at the present time.
It’s onerous to simply encapsulate the larger-than-life story of William Howard Taft. The 10th chief justice was born in Cincinnati in 1857, the son of a former secretary of battle and U.S. lawyer basic beneath Grant. Following a resoundingly profitable authorized and political profession, in 1904 Taft agreed to turn out to be Roosevelt’s secretary of battle, and in 1908 defeated the Democratic candidate, William Jennings Bryan, to turn out to be president. Taft served one time period, during which the general public regarded him as a “large, genial” fellow. (After being on the court docket for a couple of years, he remarked, “I don’t keep in mind that I ever was President.”).
After Republican President Warren Harding received the 1920 election, Harding nominated him to the chief justiceship in 1921 – which Taft gladly accepted. Taft’s most acknowledged authorized contributions to the court docket embody rulings limiting Congress’ energy, comparable to by way of Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co. in 1922, which voided a federal legislation taxing merchandise made with youngster labor. In the identical 12 months, Taft dominated in Stafford v. Wallace that the federal authorities can regulate sure actions by way of the commerce clause to stop unfair competitors. After which there’s his 1926 determination in Myers v. United States, which supported the president’s energy to take away “administrative officers” – a difficulty on the coronary heart of several cases this very time period.
However maybe Taft’s best influence as chief justice was within the realm of judicial administration, which has earned him the designation as “father of the fashionable U.S. Supreme Courtroom.” Amongst different issues, Taft established the court docket’s apply of controlling its personal caseload, reorganized the construction of the decrease courts, and oversaw the development of the Supreme Courtroom Constructing – telling architects to create one thing “of dignity and importance” (earlier than this, the court docket was confined to a small area within the U.S. Capitol).
Taft was the first former president, and the primary Supreme Courtroom justice, to be interred at Arlington Nationwide Cemetery, and stays the one justice to have a state funeral.
As Justice Robert Jackson as soon as put it, “Hughes appeared like God and talked like God.” However he was very human.
After a number of years in non-public apply, Hughes solid a public profession within the early 1900s after leading a pair of high-profile investigations – one into abuses in New York’s public utilities trade, and the opposite within the life insurance coverage enterprise. Garnering the help of President Theodore Roosevelt, Hughes ran for governor of New York and was elected in 1906. In 1910, President Taft nominated Hughes to the court docket, “partly to take away a likely challenger from the 1912 presidential election.” If Taft thought he had politically neutralized Hughes, nevertheless, he was fallacious: Hughes ran for president in 1916, reportedly eager to dispel the notion that he was a person “who positioned his personal consolation and choice for the lifetime of a choose above his obligation to the nation.” On this, Hughes grew to become the primary (and up to now, solely) sitting justice to be nominated for the presidency by a significant social gathering – although he resigned from the court docket after being nominated. After operating a seemingly profitable marketing campaign, Hughes went to sleep on election night time after being advised by his advisers that he had received – solely to lose California by a couple of thousand votes, which swung the Electoral Faculty for Woodrow Wilson.
In 1930, Hughes was nominated as chief justice by President Herbert Hoover to fill the seat vacated by Taft. Maybe the best check of Hughes’ tenure got here in 1937, when he navigated President Franklin Roosevelt’s “court docket packing plan” to extend the variety of justices on the court docket in order to fill it with sympathetic justices. Throughout this, Hughes labored with Sen. Burton Wheeler of Montana, a Democrat who agreed to guide the opposition to the court-packing invoice – and with the approval of each liberal Justice Louis Brandeis and conservative Justice Willis Van Devanter, Hughes despatched a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee countering the president’s argument that the court docket wanted to be made bigger due to the sluggish tempo of its decision-making (“calmly point[ing] out that the Court was keeping up with its work”). The plan was killed within the Senate that July, and FDR grudgingly remarked that Hughes was one of the best politician within the nation.
Stone’s classmates predicted that he would “proceed to be the most famous man” of their 1894 class – they usually have been (most likely?) proper.
Born on a farm in Chesterfield, New Hampshire, in 1872, Stone grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, and graduated from Amherst Faculty in 1894, the place he played football alongside his fellow pupil (and future President) Calvin Coolidge (it’s good to have associates who go on to excessive locations). After legislation faculty, Stone divided his time between non-public apply and academia, finally turning into dean of Columbia Legislation College in 1910, the place he remained for 13 years till Coolidge appointed him lawyer basic in 1924 and nominated him to the court docket the next 12 months.
On the bench, Stone aligned himself with the liberal wing anchored by Justices Louis Brandeis and Benjamin Cardozo, and the three came to be labeled the “Three Musketeers.” Particularly, Stone was known for his willingness to dissent alone when he believed the court docket had gone astray. In 1940, for instance, he was the sole dissenter in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, which held that public faculties’ obligatory flag salute didn’t violate the First and 14th Amendments. (Three years later, the court docket sided with Stone and overturned Gobitis 6-3 in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette.)
But Stone’s most enduring contribution could have are available 1938 in “[t]he footnote that broke constitutional law.” In United States v. Carolene Products Co., a case a couple of ban on “stuffed milk,” Stone added what would turn out to be the well-known footnote 4: a suggestion, as defined by SCOTUSblog recurring columnist Anastasia Boden, that “legal guidelines needs to be presumed constitutional until they interfered with ‘the corrective political processes which may ordinarily be anticipated to result in repeal of undesirable laws.’” This is able to come to tackle a lifetime of its personal as a basic commonplace for evaluating a measure’s constitutionality.
After a number of years on the court docket, Stone was appointed chief justice in 1941 by Roosevelt to succeed Hughes. The function of chief proved more durable to handle than his years as an affiliate justice, nevertheless, as Stone struggled to include rivalries amongst his strong-willed colleagues. In April 1946, Stone suffered a cerebral hemorrhage whereas presiding over a session of the Supreme Courtroom and died a few hours later on the age of 73.
Only a few People have held distinguished positions in all three branches of the federal authorities. The 13th chief justice was one in every of them.
Frederick Moore Vinson was born in 1890 in Louisa, Kentucky, a small city close to the border of West Virginia and Kentucky, to a southern household of “reduced circumstances.” Whereas on the marketing campaign path a couple of a long time later, Vinson would joke that he was “born in jail” – which was not solely unfaithful, given his father labored because the county jailer and the household lived in entrance of it.
In a particular January 1924 election, Vinson was elected to Congress as a Democrat. In Congress, he was often called an professional on fiscal coverage and have become a dependable ally of the New Deal. In 1938, Roosevelt appointed Vinson to the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. However the nation’s involvement in World Struggle II led Vinson to maneuver to the manager department; in 1943, Vinson became director of the workplace of financial stabilization, the place he helped oversee the wartime American financial system and management inflation.
On June 6, 1946, Truman nominated Vinson to the middle seat. Vinson most popular a restrained judiciary, encouraging the court docket to defer to the manager department when evaluating its actions, whether or not in issues of free speech (of which he was partly profitable) or the president’ seizure of metal mills through the Korean Struggle (of which he utterly failed). Nor was Vinson capable of tame a fractured court docket: though he was within the majority a staggering 97% of the time in a single time period, solely round 30% of his court docket’s selections proved unanimous (through the Roberts period, that determine is round 42%).
Vinson’s extra enduring legacy, nevertheless, lies within the realm of civil rights. In 1948’s Shelley v. Kraemer, for instance, Vinson held that enforcement of “racially restrictive [housing] covenants” violated the equal safety clause. Two years later, in Sweatt v. Painter, Vinson wrote for a unanimous court docket {that a} certified Black legislation faculty applicant couldn’t be constitutionally denied admission to the College of Texas Legislation College beneath the “separate, however equal” doctrine. And though Vinson heard Brown v. Board of Education, he by no means acquired to resolve it – simply earlier than Brown was scheduled for reargument, the chief justice died of a coronary heart assault on the age of 63.
In contrast to a few of the different fellows on this checklist, Earl Warren is a person who wants no introduction.
After incomes his legislation diploma from UC Berkeley in 1914, Warren spent just about his total profession in public office, first as Alameda County’s district lawyer – the place in 13 years he apparently by no means had a conviction overturned by the next court docket – after which as California’s lawyer basic. Warren’s file as attorney general is marred by his advocacy of the pressured internment of over 100,000 individuals of Japanese descent throughout World Struggle II. (In his memoirs, Warren said that he had “since deeply regretted the elimination order and my very own testimony advocating it, as a result of it was not in line with our American idea of freedom and the rights of residents.”)
Warren was elected California governor for 3 consecutive phrases, and in 1948 joined Thomas Dewey on the Republican presidential ticket as its vice-presidential nominee (however solely after turning down Dewey twice). That turned out to be the only time Warren misplaced in an election.
When Chief Justice Vinson died out of the blue in September 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, honoring a promise to Warren that he would make him his first appointment to the Supreme Courtroom (Warren had campaigned for Eisenhower within the basic election regardless of initially operating as a possible candidate), named Warren as chief justice.
From the get-go, Warren was able to forge relative solidarity on the court docket by pragmatically interesting to the totally different justices. Certainly, in his very first time period, Warren authored the unanimous opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring racially segregated public faculties inherently unequal beneath the 14th Modification and overturning the “separate however equal” doctrine that had prevailed since Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.
Warren additionally participated in, or wrote, a number of different rulings which dramatically altered the authorized and political panorama. In 1964’s Reynolds v. Sims, Warren established the “one person, one vote” precept, holding that illustration in state legislatures have to be apportioned equally on the premise of inhabitants – a ruling Warren said was his most vital contribution to American legislation. Within the legal realm, Miranda v. Arizona required police to advise suspects of their rights earlier than questioning – a ruling formed partly by Warren’s “close association” with August Vollmer, the Berkeley chief of police and an early advocate for interrogation reform. Loving v. Virginia struck down bans on interracial marriage, and Gideon v. Wainwright assured the correct to counsel for all legal defendants. And on First Amendment grounds, the Warren court docket produced New York Times Co. v. Sullivan and Brandenburg v. Ohio – which, respectively, held {that a} public official can solely get better damages in a civil defamation go well with if the assertion was made with “actual malice,” and decided {that a} state can’t prohibit speech unless the advocacy is “directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless motion” and is “more likely to produce such motion.”
Warren is buried at Arlington National Cemetery and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981. Though no fan of the Warren Courtroom, even President Richard Nixon said on the night time of Warren’s demise that “America has misplaced one in every of her most interesting public servants.”
The very first thing to notice is that the following chief shared each a primary and center identify together with his predecessor – which needs to be unlawful.
In any occasion, the 15th chief justice was born in 1907 in St. Paul, Minnesota to a working-class household. To get by way of night time faculty on the College of Minnesota, Burger sold insurance. Actively concerned in Republican politics, one in every of Burger’s most consequential political acts got here on the 1952 GOP conference, the place he helped deliver the state’s votes to Eisenhower. The next 12 months, he was appointed by Ike as assistant lawyer basic and, in 1955, to a seat on the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. As a choose, Burger grew to become often called selling “law-and-order” rules amicable to the Nixon administration.
On Might 21, 1969, Nixon nominated Burger to switch the retiring Warren. Though Nixon expected Burger to function a “conservative constructionist,” the chief justice proved a bit extra sophisticated. As some observe, the Burger court docket did transfer the nation to the right (as in comparison with the Warren court docket) – nevertheless it additionally expanded protections for privateness and intercourse equality. Maybe most prominently, Burger himself voted with the bulk in Roe v. Wade in 1973 (certainly, three of Nixon’s 4 appointees joined the 7-2 ruling).
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor as soon as singled Burger out alongside Taft as one of many chief justices who “actually deeply cared about judicial administration.” This led to some vital adjustments beneath his tenure – amongst different issues, Burger discouraged justices from studying their full opinions or “prolonged summaries” aloud from the bench (estimating the apply wasted 300 hours of their time annually), lower the time allotted for oral arguments in half (from two hours to 1), modified the bodily bench to a U-shape (which reduced interruptions throughout oral argument), and commenced distributing written opinion summaries alongside selections. Burger was not Mr. Fashionable amongst his colleagues, nevertheless, who might discover him “manipulative and aloof,” doing things like miscounting his personal convention votes to control opinion assignments.
Burger retired in 1986, after 17 years on the court docket, to chair the Fee on the Bicentennial of the US Structure, which took up a lot of his time that his spouse reportedly requested whether or not he might get his old job back. He died on June 25, 1995, at 87, of coronary heart failure, and (like his predecessor) is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
When Rehnquist’s elementary faculty trainer requested him what he wished to do when he was older, the longer term chief justice supposedly replied: “I’ll change the federal government.” He most definitely did.
After highschool, Rehnquist served as a weather observer in North Africa throughout World Struggle II after which attended Stanford beneath the GI Invoice, the place he graduated in 1948 with bachelor’s and grasp’s levels in political science. Rehnquist then acquired a grasp’s diploma in authorities from Harvard in 1950, after which he returned to Stanford and graduated first in his legislation faculty class in 1952 – simply two places ahead of his classmate Sandra Day O’Connor, who would later be part of him on the court docket (and who Rehnquist had as soon as dated and proposed to).
Rehnquist’s heavy involvement in Republican politics finally introduced him to the Nixon administration’s Justice Division in 1969 as assistant lawyer basic. Nixon, who called him “Renchberg” within the Watergate tapes, nominated Rehnquist to the court docket as an affiliate justice in 1971, and the Senate confirmed him 68–26.
On the court docket, Rehnquist relied on three “related constitutional ideas”: “strict development” of the Structure’s textual content, judicial deference to Congress on questions of coverage, and a sturdy protection of states’ rights. These convictions put him at nice odds with most of his colleagues – in his first 5 phrases he wrote 24 solo dissents (amongst 72 whole), which earned him the nickname “the Lone Ranger.” (By 1975, a more conservative court allowed Rehnquist to jot down an rising variety of majority opinions.)
When Burger retired and President Ronald Reagan nominated Rehnquist as Burger’s successor in 1986, the affirmation combat was contentious. Particularly, critics raised a memo Rehnquist had written as a legislation clerk to Justice Robert Jackson urging that Plessy v. Ferguson’s “separate however equal” doctrine not be overturned in Brown v. Board of Education, and pointed to racially restrictive covenants within the deeds to his houses. The Senate however confirmed him 65–33, and he was sworn in on the same day Antonin Scalia was unanimously confirmed to fill Rehnquist’s vacated affiliate justice seat.
Regardless of having as soon as been a lone ranger, Rehnquist presided over an increasing rate of unanimous instances. By way of main selections, Rehnquist is maybe most remembered for his efforts to restrict Congress’ energy – the chief justice wrote the bulk opinion placing down the Gun-Free College Zones Act and utilized the identical logic 5 years later in United States v. Morrison to invalidate a provision of the Violence Towards Ladies Act. Rehnquist additionally joined the court docket’s per curiam determination in Bush v. Gore, stopping Florida’s recount in a 5-4 determination that effectively allowed the election to be licensed for George W. Bush.
In response to his colleagues (who proved considerably extra complimentary towards him than Burger), Rehnquist “steered the Courtroom alongside a path of accountability and cautious evaluation all through his 19 years as Chief Justice … and he was capable of safe the cooperation and admiration of the entire Justices for the years during which he served” (Sandra Day O’Connor), “was a very good man who epitomized equity, dignity, and energy of character” (Clarence Thomas), and “was the fairest, best boss I’ve ever had” (Ruth Bader Ginsburg).
After which there’s the present chief.
Born in January 1955 in Buffalo, New York, Roberts attended La Lumiere College, a Catholic boarding faculty in La Porte, Indiana, during which he captained the soccer staff, wrestled, and graduated first in his class. Roberts then attended Harvard Faculty as a historical past main, and went on to Harvard Legislation College.
After a clerkship for then-Justice Rehnquist, Roberts spent two stints on the Reagan White Home, first as Particular Assistant to the Lawyer Basic after which as Affiliate Counsel to President Ronald Reagan, earlier than coming into non-public apply on the legislation agency Hogan & Hartson. Roberts left Hogan to function Principal Deputy Solicitor Basic beneath Ken Starr from 1989 to 1993, turning into, by Starr’s account, “my very closest, most trusted adviser.” Returning to Hogan in 1993, Roberts argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court, winning 25 of them.
After serving on the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for a number of years, Bush nominated Roberts to the Supreme Courtroom in July 2005, initially to fill the emptiness of retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. When Rehnquist, who was by then chief justice, died on Sept. 3, 2005, Bush withdrew that nomination and re-nominated Roberts to the middle chair.
On the bench, Roberts has authored greater than his share of great opinions – to place it mildly. However listed here are a couple of. In 2012, Roberts wrote the bulk opinion in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, which upheld the Reasonably priced Care Act by discovering the person mandate to be unconstitutional beneath the commerce clause, however legitimate as a tax. In 2013, Roberts’ majority opinion in Shelby County v. Holder struck down the Voting Rights Act’s pre-existing protection components. In 2023, Roberts wrote the 6-2 opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which held that race-conscious admissions at faculties and universities violated the equal safety clause of the 14th Modification. In 2024, Roberts authored, for a 6-3 majority, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, overturning the 40-year outdated Chevron doctrine, which had courts defer to federal companies’ interpretations of ambiguous statutes. And later that 12 months, in Trump v. United States, Roberts wrote for a 6-3 court docket holding that former presidents obtain absolute immunity from prosecution for acts inside their core constitutional powers and “presumptive immunity” for different official acts. And most just lately, Roberts authored Learning Resources v. Trump, which struck down President Donald Trump’s tariffs in a 6-3 determination. (Roberts additionally wrote a concurrence in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, during which he would have declined to overrule Roe v. Wade, and penned the lead dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges, during which the court docket acknowledged a constitutional proper to same-sex marriage.)
Final time period, Roberts was within the majority in 95% of all instances – essentially the most of any justice – and didn’t write a single separate opinion. And though Roberts sometimes speaks by way of his opinions, he has been considerably outspoken (by his own standards, at least) in defending judicial independence. After Trump referred to as a choose an “Obama judge” in 2018, for instance, Roberts issued a written assertion noting that “[w]e don’t have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.” Roberts additionally presided over Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2020 – making him, like Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase and Rehnquist earlier than him, one in every of solely three chief justices in historical past to carry out that obligation. And, little doubt to Roberts’ chagrin, there was no scarcity of drama throughout his tenure, from the Dobbs leak to current pressure between the justices themselves – all throughout a time the place the general public is largely skeptical of how the court docket is fulfilling its duties.
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