 If you're reading this blog, you are very likely concerned about justice in Wisconsin, the country, and across the world. But you're probably also pretty busy. How do you choose which books about the justice system to read during your limited free time? In a new series of posts, Wisconsin Justice Initiative founder and former executive director Gretchen Schuldt will help you out. An avid reader, she returns to the blog with book reviews so you can decide what's of interest to you and worth your time. The Chief: The Life and Turbulent Times of Chief Justice John Roberts, by Joan Biskupic. Basic Books, 421 pages, 2019. John Roberts always was a grind. When he was just 13, he wrote to the headmaster of La Lumiere boarding school, the Catholic institution Roberts wanted to attend for high school. “I’ve always wanted to stay ahead of the crowd, and I feel that the competition at La Lumiere will force me to work as hard as I can. …,” the future chief justice of the Supreme Court wrote. “I won’t be content to get a good job by getting a good education, I want to get the best job by getting the best education.” Roberts got into the elite Indiana school, worked hard, and graduated first in his class. He’s been at the top of things ever since, even becoming chief justice without ever serving a single day as an associate justice. Now he is using his seat on the high court to advance the powerful conservative legal movement that is changing American government and life. Biskupic, in her highly readable account that, thankfully, does not get stuck in the weeds of legal technicalities, portrays Roberts as a youth and young man who drove himself hard all the way through Harvard Law School and beyond. At La Lumiere, his roommate said, Roberts “would be physically exhausted at the end of each evening from studying.” As a Harvard undergrad, Biskupic writes, “He routinely stayed up past midnight, studying or writing papers until he was physically drained.” After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard Law, where he served as managing editor of the prestigious law review, Roberts clerked with the respected federal appellate Judge Henry Friendly and the very conservative Associate Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist. When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, Roberts was thrilled. When Reagan gave his 1981 inaugural address, Roberts later said, “I felt he was speaking directly to me.” With the help of Friendly and Ken Starr, then chief-of-staff in the U.S. attorney general’s office, Roberts landed a job in Reagan’s Department of Justice. (Starr’s reputation had not yet been battered by his multi-pronged investigation into President Bill Clinton.) There, Biskupic writes, Roberts solidified his anti-affirmative action views and came to believe that giving minorities preference aimed at remediating past discrimination was simply unconstitutional. He also argued strongly in memos that the Voting Rights Act should be interpreted more narrowly than many in Congress wanted. Only discriminatory intent should be considered, he said; the effects of legislation and policies should not be factors. Such an effects test, he wrote, would create a right to “proportional racial representation” on governmental bodies at all levels. “That contention was untrue,” Biskupic says. Roberts lost that battle. The 1982 Voting Rights Act extension got through Congress and was signed by Reagan. It created an effects test provision. Roberts that same year moved to the White House counsel’s office, where he put in 70 to 80 hours a week, and then on to private practice, and then to the bench when he was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by president George W. Bush. Bush tapped him as chief justice of the Supreme Court in 2005. Since then, Roberts has built a consistently conservative record. He wrote the plurality decision in Parents Involved In Community Schools v Seattle School District No. 1 (2007), which struck down a tie-breaking racial factor in a school selection process. "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," Roberts (in)famously wrote. His diligent, years-long work to weaken the Voting Rights Act met with partial success in 2013, when the Court, in Shelby County v Holder, struck down a key provision of the 1965 law designed to protect citizens’ right to vote regardless of race. Roberts authored the majority opinion in Shelby. (Most recently, in April of this year, Roberts joined the majority opinion in Louisiana v Callais, requiring that challengers under the Voting Rights Act provide proof that redistricting was done to deliberately provide minority voters with less opportunity because of their race and not for political considerations, such as partisan advantage. The Court, in effect, killed the effects test.) Roberts also voted with the majority in District of Columbia v Heller (2008), the decision finding that the Second Amendment protects individuals’ right to keep guns, even if those individuals are not connected to a militia. He concurred in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), which overturned 1973’s Roe v Wade, the decision recognizing constitutional protection of abortion rights for women. He also joined the majority in Citizens United v Federal Elections Commission (2010), a decision that cleared the way for much more corporate and outside money to flow into elections. He dissented in Obergefell v Hodges (2015), which granted same-sex couples the right to marry. (Roberts also wrote the majority opinion in Trump v United States (2024), the decision giving presidents broad immunity for crimes they commit while in office. Biskupic’s book was published before that decision.) On the bench, Biskupic writes, “Roberts had demonstrated two overriding—and often conflicting—priorities. One was institutional. He wanted high public regard for the Court as an independent branch separate from the other two and cordoned off from politics. The other derived from his interest in changing the Court’s role in racial, religious, and other social dilemmas.” Roberts, despite his major role in the Court’s resetting of the country’s legal trajectory, does not appear to be particularly popular among his fellow justices and court staff. “Roberts was naturally reticent and guarded, which made his colleagues wary of his motives,” Biskupic writes. “The wariness extended to the staff in some chambers who derisively referred to Roberts as ‘King John,’ because of the control he tried to exert throughout the building.” “Away from the public spotlight, Roberts, too, could lapse into a mocking tone or be dismissive of a colleague’s argument,” Biskupic says. “He made no secret to friends that he found individual associate justices annoying, demanding, or arrogant.” One post-book-publication clue that Biskupic was correct in her read of Roberts’ low popularity came from Justice Clarence Thomas, who said in 2022 said that before Roberts’ reign, “We actually trusted each other. We may have been a dysfunctional family, but we were a family, and we loved it.” That comment was widely seen as a direct shot at Roberts. Roberts, now 71, hasn’t given any signs that he expects to step down from the court soon. For the foreseeable future he may well remain where he is, at the top of the top Court, grinding away to the Right. Biskupic's book is a valuable guide to Roberts' legal and personal development and, without too much legal jargon, to the profound impacts he has had and continues to have on the country. The Chief can help the general reader better understand just what the heck is going on these days at the Supreme Court.
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 The U.S. Supreme Court building on March 28, 2018. Photograph by Margo Kirchner. By Margo Kirchner
In another tone-deaf year-end report, Chief Justice John Roberts ignores his own court’s present-day participation in undermining democracy. Last year, Roberts decried the erosion of adherence to court orders while ignoring how his own court’s poor ethical standards create a lack of public trust in the judiciary. This year, he says Americans can look to the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution with continued confidence. Roberts writes: “As we approach the semiquincentennial of our Nation’s birth, it is worth recalling the words of President Calvin Coolidge spoken a century ago on the occasion of America’s sesquicentennial: ‘Amid all the clash of conflicting interests, amid all the welter of partisan politics, every American can turn for solace and consolation to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken.’” “True then; true now,” Roberts remarked immediately after the quotation. That the Supreme Court under his guidance recently held that Americans can be stopped for their brown skin (now referred to as “Kavanaugh stops”) and that the president of the United States has immunity from assassinating political rivals seems lost on Roberts, or intentionally forgotten. The same can be said for how his court has used its emergency docket to undermine lower judges’ authority and shift power to the executive branch, upsetting long-existing checks and balances on presidential power. In the annual report, dated Dec. 31, 2025, Roberts puts on his historian hat (his 50-year-old Harvard bachelor’s degree was in history) to discuss Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and to school readers on the Declaration of Independence. He is a professor rather than someone who takes to heart the power he and his fellow justices wield in protecting constitutional rights. Roberts notes the Declaration’s preamble statement of self-evident truths, including that "'all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.'” But he then focuses on how these are mere hopes: “The Declaration of Independence was then, and remains today, a statement of national aspirations, not a codification of enforceable legal obligations.” Roberts correctly discusses how the Constitution, not the Declaration, is the charter for the government, and that the 1787 Constitution “fell short of honoring the abstract principles set forth in the 1776 Declaration—most notably, in regard to the Declaration’s promise of liberty and equality.” He then discusses “national accomplishments” over the years—such as the Thirteenth through Fifteenth Amendments, the Nineteenth Amendment, the overruling of Plessy v. Fergusen in Brown v. Board of Education, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964—as part of an “ongoing project to make the ideals set out in the Declaration real for all Americans.” But his conclusion that the Declaration of Independence and Constitution today "'remain firm and unshaken'” is questionable. Using the first person, Roberts includes himself in saying that federal judges must continue to decide cases “according to our oath, doing equal right to the poor and to the rich, and performing all of our duties faithfully and impartially under the Constitution and laws of the United States,” as if it is a forgone conclusion that recent Supreme Court cases have been faithful to the Constitution and treated the rich and poor with equal rights. Two bright spots: First, Roberts tells readers about the 1805 impeachment trial and acquittal of Justice Samuel Chase, pointing out that disagreement with a judge’s decisions is not a valid basis for removal from office. Second, in the best part of Roberts’ message, he thanks all judges, court staff, and judicial branch personnel “for their commitment to public service and their dedication to upholding the rule of law.” Whether intentional or not, he left “justices” out of the sentiment. Lower court judges and staff, indeed, have been carrying the torch of upholding the rule of law. The appendix to the report contains a brief summary of federal court statistics. Supreme Court filings during the October 2024 through June 2025 term were down 9% from the prior term, while the number of cases with oral arguments and signed opinions remained about the same. For the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2025, filings in the courts of appeals were up 5%; civil case filings in the district courts were up slightly, 4%, while the number of criminal defendants charged rose 13%; and bankruptcy court filings increased 11%. Of note, federal appeals by pro se litigants (those who represent themselves) made up half of all newly filed appeals; appeals by those in prison accounted for 20% of all newly filed appeals. In the district courts, civil rights filings increased by 15% and made up 15% of all cases filed, while petitions by those in prison accounted for 14% of new cases. Criminal filings for alleged immigration offenses increased 27% and constituted 41% of all criminal case filings (measured by number of defendants). Nonbusiness (mostly consumer) bankruptcy petitions accounted for 96% of the more than 550,000 new bankruptcy case filings nationwide. Chief Justice Roberts decries defiance of judgments but fails to address his court's ethics issues1/2/2025 By Margo Kirchner
In his year-end report on the federal judiciary, Chief Justice John Roberts discussed the increase in calls to defy court orders and opinions, but glaringly absent was any recognition of the role his own court’s ethical failings play in that dangerous trend. Roberts noted that after the Brown v. Board of Education case some state governors sought to defy desegregation orders, but the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations stood behind the judges, and for decades afterward even unpopular court decisions were followed. "Within the past few years, however, elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected,” Roberts wrote. At least one commentator thinks Roberts aimed these comments at JD Vance. In just one paragraph near the end of his report did Roberts suggest that federal judges themselves play a part in the public’s willingness to abide by court orders, but he then tied judges’ duties to abiding by separation of powers principles. He made no mention of possible harm to the court’s authority related to justices’ failures to adopt enforceable ethics standards or publicly report gifts of luxury trips from wealthy individuals. Roberts wrote: “The federal courts must do their part to preserve the public’s confidence in our institutions. We judges must stay in our assigned areas of responsibility and do our level best to handle those responsibilities fairly. We do so by confining ourselves to live ‘cases or controversies’ and maintaining a healthy respect for the work of elected officials on behalf of the people they represent. I am confident that the judges . . . and the corresponding officials in the other branches will faithfully discharge their duties with an eye toward achieving the ‘successful cooperation’ essential to our Nation’s continued success.” Roberts’ report focused on judicial independence. He cited, in addition to defiance of court orders, three other “areas of illegitimate activity” that threaten judicial independence: violence against judges, intimidation of judges, and disinformation. In discussing recent violence against judges, he noted the murders of state judges in Wisconsin and Maryland in response to adverse rulings by those judges. In Wisconsin, retired Juneau County Circuit Judge John Roemer was murdered in 2022 at his home in New Lisbon by a man whom he had sentenced 17 years earlier. Roberts discussed attempts to intimidate judges through doxing (the publishing of addresses and phone numbers online) and, “regrettably,” statements by public officials suggesting bias by judges as the basis for court rulings. Roberts said he was grateful for the work of federal and state legislators to sponsor legislation to protect judges’ personal information and of marshals and other law enforcement officers to keep judges safe. In Wisconsin, three acts signed into law in March 2024 are aimed at protecting judges’ personal information and reducing intimidation of judges. Regarding disinformation, Roberts suggested increasing civic education on a national scale and taking protective measures against hostile foreign actors. Did you miss Wisconsin Justice Initiative's May 19 event featuring Mark Joseph Stern from Slate discussing the current U.S. Supreme Court and its decisions? Or did you attend and now want to hear him again? Then take a listen, and recommend the recording to your friends and family, too.  |
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