Inside the Chief Justice’s chamber

Do you think the weight of a sitting Supreme Court falls on the character and ideology of the Chief Justice? A lot of people do, and among them are many politicians.

But not so, says Chief Justice John Roberts, in this interesting rare look inside the SC in the Atlantic Monthly’s online magazine.

In Roberts’s view, the most successful chief justices help their colleagues speak with one voice. Unanimous, or nearly unanimous, decisions are hard to overturn and contribute to the stability of the law and the continuity of the Court; by contrast, closely divided, 5–4 decisions make it harder for the public to respect the Court as an impartial institution that transcends partisan politics.

And in this era, we need to transcend partisan politics on the Court.

Roberts suggested that the temperament of a chief justice can be as important as judicial philosophy in determining his success or failure. And based on the impression he made in his first year on the Court and throughout his career, Roberts seems to have many of the personal gifts and talents of the most successful and politically savvy chief justices, such as Rehnquist and John Marshall…

Look at this account of the Roberts’ character:

As one of the leading Supreme Court advocates of his generation, Roberts appeared before the Court many times, representing clients on both sides of the political spectrum and earning a reputation for fair-mindedness. He was widely respected as a legal craftsman who came to cases without preconceived grand theories, but instead took positions based on the arguments and legal materials in each case. Personally as well as jurisprudentially modest, Roberts prefers baseball analogies to showy displays of his formidable intellect, and he treats litigants with evenhanded courtesy.

How many powerful members of the legislative, executive or judiciary truly treat people in their daily work with evenhanded courtesy?

Because of his personal thoughtfulness and sense of proportion, it’s easy when talking to him to forget that he is the chief justice of the United States.

What a high compliment. And a good reminder of the power of humility, as opposed to the fanfare of…say…the new Speaker of the House declaring herself the most powerful woman in America. But people take their moment as they choose, and Roberts has slipped into his role with noble dignity. ‘Partnership’ is a cornerstone of his leadership, it’s not the rhetoric it is down the road on Capitol Hill.

When I met with Roberts, the question of judicial temperament was much on his mind, since he had made it a priority of his first term to promote unanimity and collegiality on the Court. He was surprisingly successful in this goal: under his leadership, the Court issued more consecutive unanimous opinions than at any other time in recent history. But the term ended in what Justice John Paul Stevens called a “cacophony” of discordant voices. Opposing justices addressed each other in unusually personal terms and generated a flurry of stories in the media about the divisions on the Court, especially in cases involving terrorism, the death penalty, and gerrymandering. Roberts seemed frustrated by the degree to which the media focused on the handful of divisive cases rather than on the greater number of unanimous ones, and also by the degree to which some of his colleagues were acting more like law professors than members of a collegial Court.

But that’s the media and political justices acting as partisan and provocative as usual. That can change under leadership that sets a higher standard, which Roberts does. He’s a chief with vision.

“If the Court in Marshall’s era had issued decisions in important cases the way this Court has over the past thirty years, we would not have a Supreme Court today of the sort that we have,” he said. “That suggests that what the Court’s been doing over the past thirty years has been eroding, to some extent, the capital that Marshall built up.” Roberts added, “I think the Court is also ripe for a similar refocus on functioning as an institution, because if it doesn’t it’s going to lose its credibility and legitimacy as an institution.”

In particular, Roberts declared, he would make it his priority, as Marshall did, to discourage his colleagues from issuing separate opinions. “I think that every justice should be worried about the Court acting as a Court and functioning as a Court, and they should all be worried, when they’re writing separately, about the effect on the Court as an institution.”

In Roberts’s view, Marshall’s success in unifying the Court was a reflection of his temperament. “He gave everyone the benefit of the doubt; he approached everyone as a friend. The assumption was … ‘This is someone I’m going to like unless proven otherwise,’” Roberts said.

What a great personal motto. 

One of my personal philosophies is to ‘Assume good intentions’ in looking at people and behavior. And yes, that can quickly be proven wrong. But this is a good one to add. ‘Intend to like people unless proven otherwise.’ 

Court-watching is getting more interesting all the time.