John Robert the Man of the Hour Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Saves Obamacare

John G. Roberts, Jr., Chief Justice of the United States,
was born in Buffalo, New York, January 27, 1955. He married Jane Marie Sullivan in 1996 and they have two children - Josephine and John. He received an A.B. from Harvard College in 1976 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1979. He served as a law clerk for Judge Henry J. Friendly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1979–1980 and as a law clerk for then-Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist of the Supreme Court of the United States during the 1980 Term. He was Special Assistant to the Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice from 1981–1982, Associate Counsel to President Ronald Reagan, White House Counsel’s Office from 1982–1986, and Principal Deputy Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice from 1989–1993. From 1986–1989 and 1993–2003, he practiced law in Washington, D.C. He was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2003. President George W. Bush nominated him as Chief Justice of the United States, and he took his seat September 29, 2005.

John G. Roberts Jr. was originally nominated by President George W. Bush in 2005 to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court succeeding Sandra Day O’Connor, who was retiring. But the sudden death of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist that September prompted the president to name Mr. Roberts to the chief justice’s position. He was confirmed by a vote of 78 to 22 after an uneventful confirmation hearing, in which Mr. Roberts stressed his philosophy of judicial modesty and respect for precedent.

But by 2010, when the Citizens United decision was handed down, removing restrictions on corporate donations in elections, the profile of the court led by Chief Justice Roberts had been fundamentally changed. The court appeared to have entered an assertive and sometimes unpredictable phase.

The Roberts court had moved far enough to the right to make it the most conservative one in living memory, based on an analysis of four sets of political science data.

But in June 2012, Mr. Roberts broke with his conservative colleagues and handed President Obama the biggest court victory of his term. The chief justice provided the crucial vote that upheld Mr. Obama’s health care law, the Affordable Care Act.

Chief Justice Roberts ruled that the key provision in question, the so-called individual mandate requiring all Americans to buy insurance or pay a fine, failed to pass constitutional muster under the Commerce Clause, which was the heart of the administration’s arguments in favor of it. But the chief justice declared that the fine amounted to a tax that the government had the power to impose, and that the mandate could survive on that basis.

The legacy of the Roberts court came into focus in that decision, and it is one in which the chief justice deftly serves as a sort of fulcrum and safety valve.

He can pull the court back from bold action, as he did in 2009 when he persuaded seven of his colleagues to follow him in a novel interpretation of the Voting Rights Act rather than striking down its heart, as a majority of the justices had seemed inclined to do at the argument. Or he could join it in bold action, as he did seven months later when he provided the fifth vote in Citizens United, which reversed precedents, struck down part of a major law and amped up the role of money in politics. In the health care decision he appeared to tack back toward more restraint.

His ruling on the health care law surprised, delighted and dismayed many liberal legal observers, who in his reasoning the threat of stricter limits on future government actions. Conservatives were, by and large, simply infuriated.

Their dissatisfaction grew as they studied the decision and found clues that the chief justice might initially have been in the majority to strike down the law, only to switch sides. A report from CBS Newson Sunday that he had changed his mind added to the anger.

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The health care decision was the culmination of a string of important rulings, as the court in 2012 put itself at the center of some of the most hotly debated questions facing American society, agreeing to hear cases related to laws on immigration, the use of race in college admissions and its 2010 Citizens United decision on campaign finance.

Chief Justice Roberts will probably lead the Supreme Court for an additional two decades or more. But clashes like the one over the health care law come around only a few times in a century, and he may well complete his service without encountering another case posing such fundamental questions about the structure of American government.

The case posed a choice between two of the chief justice’s competing instincts. On the one hand, he views himself as a steward of the court’s prestige and authority, and he has called for incremental decisions from large majorities rather than broad but sharply divided rulings.

At the same time, Chief Justice Roberts has embraced an array of assertive judicial projects that have interpreted the Constitution in ways that have fundamentally reshaped American law. The court he has led since 2005 has cut back on campaign spending limits,gun control laws, procedural protections for criminal defendantsand the government’s ability to take account of race in decisions about employment and education.

And as Chief Justice Roberts explained at his confirmation hearings in 2005, his approach to testing the constitutionality of federal lawsinvolves significant deference to the elected branches.

He made the point more sharply the day the health care ruling was announced, in a part of his opinion in which he spoke only for himself.

“It is not our job,” he said, “to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”

http://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/john_g_jr_roberts/index.html
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/video?id=8718636
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Roberts
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/07/02/if-obamacares-tax-have-solution/

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/rich-noyes/2012/06/28/tv-networks-gush-over-chief-justice-roberts-man-hour-who-might-have-save