Convictions : John Roberts

Fondly Remembering Tim Russert—Death of a Partisan

Doug Kmiec — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 13:44:00 GMT

The untimely death of Tim Russert is a tremendous loss of a partisan for getting at the truth of a subject by fair-minded, objective, and civil means. requiescat in pace....(read more)

Just What Is a Lawyer's Lawyer?

Orin Kerr — Tue, 20 May 2008 19:52:00 GMT

Diane, Adam, I wonder if the difference between you is more about the meaning of the term "lawyer's lawyer" than about Chief Justice Roberts.

As I have heard the term used, a "lawyer's lawyer" is a lawyer whom the top members of the bar see as a top member of the bar. If that's the definition, then I agree with Adam about John Roberts. Roberts was not only a lawyer's lawyer, he probably was the lawyer's lawyer of the Supreme Court bar of his generation. I clerked for Justice Kennedy in OT2003, and Roberts was already a legend as an advocate. People used to say that Waxman and Clement were good, but too bad you missed John Roberts (who by then was already on the D.C. Circuit). According to rumors circulating among the Supreme Court bar, the justices of the Rehnquist Court generally saw him as the finest advocate of his generation.

My sense is that Diane's definition is different. Diane, please correct me if I'm wrong, but my sense is that you see a "lawyer's lawyer" as more of a skilled legal technician who lacks a clear ideological agenda. Under that view, as I understand it, a lawyer's lawyer is someone who is interested in the law as law and is not on any particular ideological "team"—and, perhaps implicitly, would follow that law faithfully without bias if confirmed as a judge. I tend to agree with you that this lack of an agenda is part of the term "judge's judge," but I don't see as implicit in the term "lawyer's lawyer."

I don't know if either definition is necessarily correct or more common. But I wonder if the disagreement between Adam and Diane is mostly about finding the right definition of the term. Also, perhaps it's worth noting that both Roberts and Stevens pass the "lawyer's lawyer" test with flying colors under the first standard, but that there would be sharp ideological divisions today about both Roberts and Stevens under the second one.

Heller's opportunity to put Law over Politics

Doug Kmiec — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:21:00 GMT

Is the Roberts Court about law or politics? The DC gun case gives the Justices a unique opportunity to try out an internal procedure that might silence those who insist that Supreme Court judgment consists of little more than 4 conservatives arrayed against 4 liberals moderated by Justice Kennedy's perspective du jour....(read more)

Guns and Roberts

Emily Bazelon — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:38:00 GMT

Dahlia and Akhil Amar just posted great pieces in Slate about D.C. v. Heller, the guns case to be argued on Tuesday at the Supreme Court. As lots of commentators have already said, this case is irresistible because the court will be writing on a practically blank slate: The relevant precedent is from 1939, and it didn't definitively hold that there's no individual right to bear arms in the Second Amendment, though the court certainly waved in that direction. As Dahlia points out, by staying out of the gun control fray, the court has been practicing a form of judicial restraint for the past 69 years. The big question now is whether it will stick to that path by issuing a decision that recognizes an individual right to bear arms but allows for a lot of gun control regulation, as Solicitor General Paul Clement is urging, or whether it will burn down a whole lot of gun laws in the wake of resurrecting the Second Amendment, as the brief that Vice President Cheney signed, and that David flags for us, would have it. (The court could also cling to the old interpretation of the Second Amendment as speaking only to having a gun for the purpose of serving in a state-run militia, but in light of the recent revisionist scholarship on the subject, I doubt it.) In any case, since this moment is a huge test for judicial restraint and modesty, isn't it also a huge test for Chief Justice John Roberts? Modesty was his mantra during his confirmation hearings. I've argued that he didn't deliver on that promise last term. Is Heller likely to be the big fat data point on this question from 2007-2008? I'm especially intrigued by the question since there's ostensibly a way to duck the looming constitutional question altogether, by treating D.C. as its own oddball scenario since it's not a state. Anyone think that's a likely resolution, or want to weigh in on the Clement v. Cheney face-off?