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CHIEF JUSTICE ...an ideological stab in the back. But for Roberts himself, it was arguably the apotheosis of a jurisprudential and personal struggle years in the making—between his staunch conservatism and his attachment to predictability, social harmony, decorum, and propriety. “John’s caution is very deep-seated,” says a former colleague who would speak about the chief justice only on the condition of anonymity. “He doesn’t like surprises.” In voting to uphold health-care reform, Roberts showed deference to the elected branches of government, averted a direct clash with a president from an opposing party in the heat of a national election, and strengthened the court’s institutional legitimacy as a neutral arbiter of the law. The court’s public image, however, remains extremely divisive. And inside the court, Roberts’s own last-minute vote change seems to have inflamed his conservative colleagues. Now, as the chief justice prepares to take up the gavel for his eighth term, tackling such politically fraught issues as affirmative action, gay marriage, and voting rights, he presides over a court awash in recriminations and leaks: just the kind of disorder and unseemliness that John Roberts has spent his whole life avoiding.
ReplyDeleteTo understand Roberts’s psychology, it helps to begin with a moment that he would probably like to forget: his administering of the presidential oath to Barack Obama.
A rock-ribbed Republican, Roberts almost certainly did not vote for Obama. But he enjoys the pomp and ceremony of his job and was looking forward to the small but highly visible constitutional role he would play during the swearing-in ceremony. A new book on the relationship between Roberts and the Obama White House by journalist Jeffrey Toobin reconstructs the elaborate planning that led up to the quadrennial ritual in cinematic detail. Toobin reports that Roberts relentlessly rehearsed the 35-word oath. His wife, Jane, joked that her husband had repeated the oath in their suburban home so many times, “the dog thinks it’s the president.”