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Roberts Is Sworn In as Chief Justice of U.S.
By DAVID STOUT
Published: September 29, 2005
WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 - John G. Roberts Jr. was confirmed as the 17th chief justice of the United States today in a formality that intensified speculation over who will be President Bush's next Supreme Court nominee.
The Senate confirmed the nominee by a vote of 78 to 22, with unanimous support from Republicans and with half the Democrats voting for him as well. He was sworn in at the White House this afternoon by Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens amid expectations that the president will announce his next choice for the court very soon.
Skip to next paragraph At the White House, the new chief justice thanked President Bush for selecting him. "There is no way to repay the confidence you have shown in me, other than to do the best job I possibly can do," he said. "And I will try to do that every day."
"What Daniel Webster termed 'the miracle of our Constitution' is not something that happens every generation," he said. "But every generation in its turn must accept the responsibility of supporting and defending the Constitution and bearing truth faith and allegiance to it."
There has been widespread speculation that Mr. Bush will tap a woman or a member of a minority group for the remaining court vacancy. The president encouraged such speculation early this week when he commented on the need for diversity on the court. No one will be surprised if the president nominates a Hispanic, since there has never been one on the high court.
Mr. Bush did not mention the remaining vacancy at the White House ceremony. "The nomination power is one of the most serious responsibilities of a president," Mr. Bush said. "When a president chooses a Supreme Court justice, he is placing in human hands the full authority and majesty of the law."
Chief Justice Roberts will preside over the Supreme Court term that begins on Monday, and in all likelihood over many terms thereafter, since he is only 50 years old. In moving up from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, he succeeds Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, for whom he was once a law clerk.
Justice Stevens is 85 years old, and shows no sign of flagging. Should Chief Justice Roberts serve until he is as old as Justice Stevens, he will still be chief justice in the year 2040.
Chief Justice Roberts and his wife, Jane, a lawyer, had lunch with President Bush at the White House today before the swearing-in and after watching the Senate vote from the Roosevelt Room of the White House.
The new chief justice was originally nominated to succeed the retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. But with the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist on Sept. 3, President Bush renominated Judge Roberts to be chief - leaving Justice O'Connor's post unfilled. She has said she will stay on the court until her successor is confirmed.
"With the confirmation of John Roberts, the Supreme Court will embark upon a new era in its history, the Roberts era," Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican majority leader, said before the vote. "For many years to come, long after many of us have left public service, the Roberts court will be deliberating on some of the most difficult and fundamental questions of U.S. law."
Those issues include abortion and assisted suicide, issues that caused his Democratic opponents to view him with suspicion. During hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrats pressed him on those topics and on whether his views on civil rights and women's rights had changed since his days as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration. The judge told his questioners that his Catholic faith would not determine how he rules on matters of law.
The Democrats who opposed him said he had not been frank enough during the hearings and had been downright evasive at times. Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a member of the Judiciary Committee, was a leading opponent.
"I hope I am proved wrong about John Roberts," Mr. Kennedy said today. "I have been proved wrong before on my confirmation votes."
Even his critics have conceded his intellectual brilliance and his accomplishments as a lawyer. And after the Judiciary Committee endorsed him, 13 to 5, one week ago, with three of the panel's eight Democrats backing him, any suspense about the nomination evaporated.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic minority leader and an opponent of the nominee, said before the vote that he had not tried to twist the arms of any Democrats. "They will vote their conscience," he said.
Twenty-two Democrats voted for confirmation today, and 22 voted against. The Senate's lone independent, James Jeffords of Vermont, voted in favor. Vermont's other senator, Patrick J. Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, voted for confirmation.
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and a member of the Judiciary Committee, said he hoped that his opposition would turn out to be a mistake.
"I decided that while there was a very good chance that Judge Roberts would be a mainstream, very conservative but mainstream justice without an ideological agenda, that he was not convincing enough," Mr. Schumer said.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, also voted no. So did Senators Jon S. Corzine and Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrats of New Jersey. Senators Joseph I. Lieberman and Christopher Dodd, Democrats from Connecticut, voted for the nominee.
Democrats who opposed the nominee made it clear early on that they would not try to block his confirmation through parliamentary moves. But they have signaled that they will consider such tactics if Mr. Bush nominates someone whom they consider a conservative ideologue.
"The curtain is about to rise on the nomination of a replacement for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor," Mr. Schumer said. "If ever there was a time that cried out for consensus, the time is now."
Senate Panel Begins Hearings on Nomination for Chief Justice
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By DAVID STOUT
Published: September 12, 2005
WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 - Judge John G. Roberts Jr. expressed reverence today for the United States, its Constitution and the Supreme Court, which he pledged to preside over "without fear or favor" and with deep respect for the rule of law.
"I come before the committee with no agenda," he told members of the Senate
If confirmed as the 17th chief justice of the United States, he said, "I will confront every case with an open mind."
Judges ought to perform with "a certain humility," knowing that they are "servants of the law," the nominee said.
"Nobody ever went to a ball game to see an umpire," he said, promising panel members that he would always remember that his job would be to "call balls and strikes, not to pitch or bat."
Speaking without notes for about seven minutes, Judge Roberts recalled "the endless fields" of Indiana, where he grew up, and said they symbolize for him "the limitless possibilities of our great land."
His remarks about the ideal humility of a judge, and his basically modest role, were in keeping with his conservative beliefs that jurists should decide cases according to what the law is, not what they think it ought to be.
But, perhaps hoping to alleviate some Democrats' concerns that he is insufficiently sensitive to civil rights, Judge Roberts recalled the awe that he used to feel when arguing before the Supreme Court as a lawyer in the solicitor general's office and telling the justices, "I speak for the United States."
He said he felt just as much awe later, when he was in private practice and occasionally argued against the United States.
"Here was the United States, the most powerful entity in the world, aligned against my client," Judge Roberts said. "And yet all I had to do was convince the court that I was right on the law and the government was wrong and all of that power and might would recede in deference to the rule of law. That is a remarkable thing."
Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, viewing the Constitution through somewhat different prisms, promised today to give fair and thorough consideration to the nomination.
As the nominee sat in a Russell Building hearing room where so much history has been made, Republicans expressed the hope that Judge Roberts, if confirmed as the 17th chief justice, would help to steer the Supreme Court back to its intended role as the judiciary branch, not as a sort of super-Congress that too often overrules elected lawmakers.
Democrats, meanwhile, said they wanted the next chief justice to continue America's path toward equality. That America still exists as two societies, separate and unequal, has been painfully obvious in the suffering along the Gulf Coast, where a disproportionate number of the homeless and dead are poor people of color, Democrats said.
"This hearing comes at a time of turbulent partisanship in the United States Senate," said Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who heads the 18-member panel. "Turbulent partisanship."
That partisanship has been clear in previous battles over judicial nominees. Today, the lawmakers offered starkly different views on the virtues - or faults - of big government, how the judiciary should function in the American system and, perhaps of most immediate importance for Judge Roberts, how much of an obligation he has to say how he might rule on issues like privacy, abortion and capital punishment.
Members of both parties agreed that the nomination of Judge Roberts, who now sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, is especially important. Judge Roberts is 50. If he is confirmed and sits on the high court until he is as old as Justice John Paul Stevens, 85, he will be chief justice until the year 2040.
"We the people have just this one chance," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the panel. Mr. Leahy said the 100 members of the Senate have a solemn obligation to do right on behalf of some 280 million of their fellow Americans.
Judge Roberts, who made his opening statement after the committee members made theirs, looked intent but unintimidated as he heard the senators' opening remarks. As Mr. Specter noted, the room has been the scene of such historic events as the Army-McCarthy hearings of a half-century ago, the Watergate hearings and the Iran-contra hearings.
The judge smiled slightly as Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, said that the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist would surely be proud to see Judge Roberts, one of his former clerks, in position to succeed him.
Mr. Hatch said he hoped the next chief justice would believe in the proper separation of powers rather than seeing lawmakers as obstacles to their own agendas. Too many people fail to recognize that this proper separation is "the linchpin of limited government and liberty," Mr. Hatch said.