John Roberts Biography
John Roberts is a lawyer and jurist from the United States who has been the 17th Chief Justice of the United States since 2005. Shelby County v. Holder, National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, King v. Burwell, Department of Commerce v. New York, and Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California are all cases in which Roberts wrote the majority opinion.
John Roberts Age
Roberts is 67 years old as of 2022. He was born John Glover Roberts Jr. on 27 January 1955 in Buffalo, New York, United States.
John Roberts Height
Roberts stands at a height of 5 feet 11 inches (1.8 m).
John Roberts Education
Roberts attended La Lumiere School in La Porte, Indiana, a small but affluent and academically rigorous Roman Catholic boarding school where he was captain of the football team and a regional wrestling champion. He was a member of the choir and drama, and he co-edited the school newspaper. In 1973, he graduated first in his class.
Based on his high school achievements, Roberts was admitted to Harvard University as a sophomore (second-year) student and majored in history. One of his early papers, “Marxism and Bolshevism: Theory and Practice,” won Harvard’s William Scott Ferguson Prize for the most outstanding essay by a sophomore history major, and his senior paper, “The Utopian Conservative: A Study of Continuity and Change in Daniel Webster’s Thought,” won a Bowdoin Prize. Every summer, he returned home to work at the steel plant that his father managed. He received an A.B. summa cum laude in 1976 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Roberts had intended to pursue a Ph.D. in history but instead chose to attend Harvard Law School. He went on to become the managing editor of the Harvard Law Review and earned a J.D. magna cum laude in 1979.
John Roberts Family
Roberts is the son of Rosemary and John Glover “Jack” Roberts Sr. His father was of Irish and Welsh descent, and his mother was descended from Slovak immigrants from Szepes, Hungary. He has an older sister named Kathy, as well as two younger sisters named Peggy and Barbara. Roberts grew up in Hamburg, New York, where his father worked as an electrical engineer for the Bethlehem Steel Corporation at its large Lackawant to plant.
Roberts and his family moved to Long Beach, Indiana, in 1965, when his father became manager of a new steel plant in nearby Burns Harbor.
John Roberts Wife
Since 1996, Roberts and his wife, Jane Sullivan, have been married. Sullivan is a lawyer who rose to prominence as a legal recruiter at Major, Lindsey & Africa, and Mlegal. She serves on the board of trustees at her alma mater, the College of the Holy Cross, alongside Clarence Thomas. John “Jack” and Josephine “Josie” are the couple’s two adopted children.
Roberts is one of only 15 Catholic justices in the Supreme Court’s 115-year history. Six of the fifteen justices are currently serving (Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett).
John Roberts Height
In 2007, Roberts had a seizure at his vacation home in St. George, Maine, and was taken to a hospital in Rockport, Maine, where doctors discovered no identifiable cause. Roberts had a similar seizure in 1993, but a neurological evaluation “found no cause for concern,” according to an official Supreme Court statement. The law does not require federal judges to release information about their health.
Roberts fell at a Maryland country club on June 21, 2020; his forehead required sutures, and he stayed in the hospital overnight for observation. Doctors ruled out a seizure and concluded that Roberts’ lightheadedness was caused by dehydration.
John Roberts Net Worth
Roberts’ net worth was more than $6 million, according to a disclosure he provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee prior to his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, including $1.6 million in stocks.
John Roberts Salary
When he joined the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2003, he reduced his annual salary from $1 million to $171,800; as Chief Justice in 2014, his salary is $255,500. Roberts sold his Pfizer stock in 2010, making it ethical for him to participate in two pending Pfizer cases.
John Roberts Conservative
Although Roberts is identified as having a conservative judicial philosophy, his vote in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius to uphold the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) caused the press to contrast his Court with the Rehnquist Court. Roberts’ judicial philosophy is regarded as more moderate and conciliatory than that of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. He wishes the Court would reach a more unanimous decision. Roberts’ voting record is most similar to that of Samuel Alito.
John Roberts U.S. Court of Appeals
President George W. Bush nominated Roberts to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on May 9, 2001, to replace Judge James L. Buckley, who had recently retired. However, the Democratic Party had a Senate majority at the time and was at odds with Bush over his judicial nominees. In the 107th Congress, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy refused to give Roberts a hearing. On January 7, 2003, the Republicans reclaimed control of the Senate, and Bush resubmitted Roberts’ nomination that day. Roberts was confirmed on May 8, 2003, and was sworn in on June 2, 2003. During his two-year tenure on the D.C. Circuit, Roberts wrote 49 opinions, eliciting two dissents from other judges and writing three of his own.
John Roberts Health care reform
Roberts delivered the majority opinion in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius on June 28, 2012, which upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by a 5–4 vote. Although the “individual mandate” component of the Act could not be upheld under the Commerce Clause, the Court stated that the mandate could be construed as a tax and thus was ruled to be valid under Congress’s authority to “lay and collect taxes.” The Court overturned a portion of the law pertaining to the withholding of funds from states that did not comply with the Medicaid expansion; Roberts stated that “Congress is not free… to penalize states that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding.”
According to Supreme Court sources, Roberts changed his vote on the individual mandate after an initial vote, and he largely wrote both the majority and minority opinions. This extremely unusual circumstance has also been used to explain why the minority opinion was unsigned, which is a rare occurrence for the Supreme Court.
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