Introduction
The 17th Chief Justice of the United States, Mr. John Roberts is one of the most controversial, yet charismatic figures on the legal agenda of the United States of America. Appointed in 2005 by President George Walker Bush, John Roberts is one of the classical examples of strong judicial leadership and stalwart adherence to the canonical standards in case lawmaking (Hoffer &, Hoffer & Hull, 2007).
This research aims at analyzing the leadership profile of John Roberts in his capacity as a Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Although his somewhat untraditional approach to leading the United States Supreme Court attracted scholarly attention of the multiple commentators, the most comprehensive reviews of his leadership approaches have been compiled by Linda Greenhouse (2014), Joel Godlstein (2011) and Brandon Bartels & Phillip Wininger (2016). The works of Greenhouse and Bartel & Phillips are especially interesting, because they illustrate the way John Roberts coordinated the lawmaking activities of the associate justices during the administration of the President Obama, which took more liberal developments than during the tenure of The President Bush.
Apart from providing brief summaries and identifying the main messages of those studies, this work also attempts at developing a leadership profile of the Justice John Roberts, specifically focusing on analyzing his path to leadership, his leadership style, strengths and weaknesses of his leadership capacities and his most impactful decisions on his post. Finally, the paper speaks about the political influence, which he exercised on lawmaking and other political processes in the United States.
Joel Goldstein’s “Leading the Court: Studies in Influence as Chief Justice”
The key message sent by Joel Goldstein to the readers is that despite his ten years of presiding in the United States Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts is hardly a good subject for characterization, because he is particularly prone to taking unpredictable decisions (Goldstein, 2011). Although himself an ingrained conservative, Chief Justice Roberts frequently dissented with other conservatives. In addition, John Roberts frequently opposed the Court’s majority, as he did together with Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in Gonzales vs. Oregon. In this, as well as in several other cases, Chief Justice Roberts demonstrated his strong commitment to the personal legal convictions, rather than to the popular ramifications of the contemporary interpretation of the legal thought. When the personal opinion of the Chief Justice Roberts concurred with other Justice Associates, like in Gonzales v. Carhart, Chief Justice Roberts openly and willingly supported the majority. However, as a Chief Justice he often was in opposition to the other Justices of the Supreme Court, and, even when significantly outnumbered, like in Wyeth v. Levine, Roberts often remained firmly convinced in his ideas. The pressure of the majority could not make him to change his mind (Goldstein, 2011).
Generally, the main message of this work is that Chief Justice John Roberts prioritizes his role as a judge over his leadership mission. Even if there is a serious disagreement among the Associate Justices, he mainly focuses on expressing his own legal thought than supporting a particular camp of his colleagues.
Linda Greenhouse’s “The Chief Justice Self-Assignment of Majority Opinions”
In her comprehensive analysis of the United States Supreme Court cases under the chairmanship of John Roberts, the author speculates that the right of the Chief Justice to assign the opinion of the Court is one of the most important elements of his leverages as the leader, and Chief Justice John Roberts used this mechanism to the fullest extent possible (Greenhouse, 2014). In particular, during the confirmation hearings, when his eligibility to join the Supreme Court was examined, Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged that the main mission of the Chief Justice is to ‘harmonize the opinions of the Associate Justices to ensure that the unanimity of the Court’s decisions is compliant with which individual oath’ of the Associate Justices (Greenhouse, 2014). In other words, his position articulated a classic normative approach to construing the mission of the Chief Justice, i.e. the head of the Supreme Court should act in a way that focuses preserving and protecting integrity and legitimacy of the court.
Thus, the work of Linda Greenhouse illustrates that although expressing his personal legal opinions is important, safeguarding integrity and public image of the Court is a assuredly a matter of higher priority. The practice demonstrated that in the extreme cases, Chief Justice John Roberts was ready to put his legal reputation at stake (though the critics never succeeded in pinpointing a single flaw in his statements) for the sake of protecting the Court’s reputation.
Brandon Bartels & Phillip Wininnger’s “Genuine Leader or Merely “First among Equals” Probing the Leadership Capacity of the Chief Justice”
The main idea of this work is that Chief Justice John Roberts changed the once popular principle of ‘the first among the equals’ and became a real leader of the United Supreme Courts. The authors reached this conclusion because the Chief Justice assigned writing controversial opinions on himself more often than on his colleagues. Statistically, from 101 important decisions of the Unite Supreme Court, John Roberts personally compiled the majority opinion for the 25 (Bartels & Winninger, 2016)). With regard to the rest of the cases were, he evenly distributed them among other justices.
In contrast to his predecessors, Chief Justice John Roberts has a remarkably different approach to leading the Supreme Court of the United States. Despite the fact that his path to become a leader of the most reputable judicial authority in the country was rather traditional (clerkship with the Associate Justice Rehnquist followed by a brief career in the attorney’s office, private practice and government service), he prominently revealed his leadership capabilities as the Chief Justice after his nomination.
Generally, his leadership style can be described as participative approach, i.e. Chief Justice John Roberts clearly demonstrates that he values the input of each individual Associate Justice, although he often reserves the right of being the ultimate decision maker. At the same time, while retaining the right of taking the final decision John Roberts unreservedly assumes responsibility for the role of the Supreme Court in the most controversial cases.
The decisions of John Roberts often had serious political weight. In particular, he vigorously protected the provisions of Obamacare legislation, while also he persistently opposed the idea of legitimizing Guantanamo camp, thereby demonstrating a strong consistency in maintaining balance between protection of the political interest and the rule of law.
References
Bartels, B. & Wininger, P. (2016). Genuine leader or merely “first among equals?” Probing the leadership capacity of the chief justice. Web. Retrieved from http://www.phillipwininger.com/uploads/4/0/7/0/40701897/writing_sample_2_chief_justice.pdf
Goldstein, J. (2011). Leading the court: Studies in influence as chief justice. Web. Retrieved from http://www.stetson.edu/law/lawreview/media/40-3-Goldstein-PublicationCopy.pdf
Greenhouse, L. (2014). Chief Justice Roberts in his own voice: the Chief Justice’s self-assignment of Majority opinions. Workshop of Judicial Behavior, University of Chicago
Hoffer, P., Hoffer, W., & Hull, N. (2007). The Supreme Court. Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas.
