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Chief Justice Roberts: Activist Court Spells Disaster
CHICAGO - Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Thursday told students and faculty at the Northwestern University School of Law that he believes the high court functions best when justices focus narrowly on the case at hand. Justices run great risks when they go beyond the specifics of the case and attempt to set public policy, said Roberts, a strict constructionist confirmed in his post in September 2005. "Judges should act like judges, not like statesmen," Roberts said in response to a student question following a lecture at the university. The talk concluded the first of Roberts' two days as Howard J. Trienens Visiting Judicial Scholar at Northwestern. He noted that the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, for whom he served as clerk, was the first jurist to participate in the program.
Story Continues Below Roberts' lecture focused on four key former chief justices: John Jay, John Marshall, William Howard Taft, and Charles Evans Hughes. Roberts, 52, noted that Jay - the first chief justice - was appointed at age 43 and resigned after less than six years, complaining of a lack of challenge. He said Jay's one great contribution to the high court came when he declined reappointment several years later, which led to the appointment of Marshall, whom Roberts called the greatest justice to hold the post. Roberts praised Taft, a former president, with being the most skilled judicial administrator in Supreme Court history. He said Taft's successor, Hughes, "defended the Supreme Court in the most serious attack in its history," which he defined as President Franklin D. Roosevelt's failed 1937 "court-packing" plan to appoint additional justices favorable to his New Deal agenda. But when asked by a student which of his predecessors he would most like to sit down and talk with, Roberts surprised many in the auditorium by naming Roger Brooke Taney, the much maligned chief justice who served from 1836 to 1864. Taney, who succeeded Marshall, is remembered almost exclusively as author of the Dredd Scott vs. Sandford decision of 1857, which Roberts called "disastrous." In that ruling, Taney wrote for the majority in declaring that all people of African ancestry, whether slave or free, were not and never could become U.S. citizens. The decision also declared the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, thus permitting slavery in all federal territories. "Yes, I'd like to sit down and talk with Taney," Roberts said. "I'd like to sit down with him before he wrote that ruling and try to talk him out of it." Roberts called Dredd Scott a prime example of what can happen when a justice widens the focus too far. "Taney thought he was settling the issue of slavery," Roberts said. "Instead, he accelerated the course toward Civil War." © 2007 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Editor's note:
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