New Yorker article on Chief Justice Roberts
Definitely worth a read if you have the time:
The differences between Roberts and Obama include such issues as abortion and affirmative action, but they extend beyond such familiar legal battlegrounds to what Roberts called, in his Tucson speech, “the nature of the Court itself.” “When Justice Rehnquist went on the Court, a minority of the Justices had been former federal judges,” Roberts observed. “Today, for the first time in its history, every member of the Court was a federal court-of-appeals judge before joining the Court—a more legal perspective, and less of a policy perspective.”
Obama does not regard the all-former-judge makeup of the Supreme Court as an unalloyed virtue. “The obvious sources of candidates have been people already on the bench and people who are distinguished academic legal scholars and teachers,” Gregory Craig, the White House counsel, told me in February. “But he’s also looking for lawyers who have been public defenders or prosecutors, or representing points of view with respect to immigration or the Innocence Project. He doesn’t think you have to be a member of the circuit courts of appeals to be on the Supreme Court.” Obama has spoken fondly of Earl Warren, the fourteenth Chief Justice, who came to the Court from the governorship of California.
When Vice-President Biden publicly mocked Roberts about his gaffe at a ceremony shortly after the Inauguration, Obama shot him a scathing look of rebuke. (Biden later called Roberts to apologize.) Still, there is no disputing that the President and the Chief Justice are adversaries in a contest for control of the Court, and that both men come to that battle well armed. Obama has at most one more chance to take the oath of office, and Roberts will probably have a half-dozen more opportunities to get it right. But each time Roberts walks down the steps of the Capitol to administer the oath, he may well be surrounded—and eventually outvoted—by Supreme Court colleagues appointed by Barack Obama. ♦
One can only hope.
