When President Bush nominated John Roberts Jr. as a federal appeals court judge two years ago, the Washington lawyer found himself in the middle of a political storm–not a hurricane, but at least a gale.
Republicans were using Roberts as a sort of poster boy for what was wrong with the nominating process; he had waited 11 years for his shot, after initially failing to get a confirmation hearing in the Democratic-controlled Senate when Bush’s father held the White House. So with Roberts seated in front of him in the hearing room in 2003, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) repeated “11 years” again and again.
But Roberts seemed uncomfortable. “Well,” he told Hatch, “I like to think I haven’t been just treading water in the meantime. . . . “
It might have been more than a simple point of pride for the self-effacing prep school grad from Indiana who was nominated by Bush on Tuesday to become the nation’s 109th Supreme Court justice. Roberts was already deemed by almost everyone to have a brilliant legal mind, having reached academic stardom at Harvard Law School. He rose to become one of the top Supreme Court attorneys in the nation, drawing praise from justices and fellow lawyers on the left and right. He fell in love and got married. And he became the father of two adopted children.
“By the time he became a judge, he had the life experiences and professional experiences to become a spectacular judge,” said Richard Lazarus, one of Roberts’s closest friends for almost 30 years. “It’s personally when he became a much stronger person and lawyer.”
It was Roberts’s persistence and patience, his sense of humor in the face of adversity and the way he embraced all aspects of his life during those years that Lazarus says best exemplify the qualities Bush’s pick would bring to the nation’s highest court.
Some of his other friends like to think of it another way.
“He’s just a good, solid Midwest guy,” said Bob MacLaverty of Kenilworth, Ill., who roomed with Roberts their senior year of high school at the private La Lumiere School in La Porte, Ind. “He is absolutely the same guy. It’s refreshing to see. Very sharp, but not arrogant at all.”
Roberts, 50, was born in Buffalo, but grew up in Long Beach, Ind., after his father got a job in management at Bethlehem Steel on the Indiana shore of Lake Michigan.
At that time, La Lumiere School was a small all-boys school that had been founded a few years earlier by Roman Catholics who wanted a school for their sons. The school had a reputation for academics and fielding solid sports teams.
Roberts was captain of the football team and a talented wrestler, his classmate said.
“He was a surprisingly social guy for someone that smart, not dorky at all,” MacLaverty said.
MacLaverty, who works for an investment firm in Chicago, said he has remained in touch with Roberts and talked to him just last week. They were in each other’s weddings, he said.
Roberts went to Harvard College and graduated summa cum laude in 1976. He went straight into Harvard Law School, where his intellect frustrated at least one classmate.
According to Lazarus, who went to Harvard with Roberts, one classmate was ready to quit because he thought he wasn’t smart enough for Harvard Law School. Then he realized that his proximity to Roberts warped the view. “After he figured out that John was just that much smarter than everybody else, he was reassured,” Lazarus said.
Larry Robbins, who was Roberts’ editor at the Harvard Law Review, described Roberts as a gifted writer whose legal opinions are amusing and wise.
“You can always tell a brief or an opinion that John has written,” said Robbins, a lawyer with a Washington law firm. “He has a turn of a phrase that distinguishes his craftmanship and puts a stamp on it.”
Robbins and Roberts never discussed the idea of being a judge, wanting instead to “finish law school and see what happens next.”
That next stage came when Roberts and Lazarus moved to Washington and shared an apartment on Capitol Hill. Roberts was assuming the classic pedigree of a future federal judge: He landed a job as a Supreme Court clerk with then-Justice William Rehnquist.
He went on to work as a lawyer in the Reagan administration before taking a job in the solicitor general’s office, which represents the administration in appeals, including before the Supreme Court.
It was during these years, 1989-1993, when he zealously represented the administration’s positions during the presidency of President George H.W. Bush, that Roberts would do his most controversial work. His presentation of those cases would draw the ire of Democrats–a record opponents were citing Tuesday.
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Among other things, they cited Roberts’ positions on behalf of Bush in attempting to limit abortion rights, his advocacy against affirmative action and federal environmental protection laws, and his efforts to shield states from lawsuits.
But those weren’t necessarily his own views, Roberts would tell the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2003. And lawyers have an ethical obligation to represent their clients to the best of their ability.
“I think the standard phrase is `zealous advocacy on behalf of a client,'” he said in 2003.
In the solicitor general’s office, and at the top Washington law firm of Hogan & Hartson, Roberts honed what colleagues described as extraordinary preparation skills. He would spend countless hours preparing each argument before the Supreme Court.
“He’s kind of the Tiger Woods of the Supreme Court bar,” said Richard Garnett, a University of Notre Dame Law School professor, and, like Roberts, a former clerk to Rehnquist.
Garnett said that in 1996, when Garnett clerked for Rehnquist, the chief still pointed to Roberts, who had clerked more than a decade earlier, as a lawyer to be emulated.
Though Roberts is regarded as firmly conservative, he is not a so-called movement conservative whose politics drive his arguments.
Shannen Coffin, a Washington lawyer who has worked with and argued against Roberts, said he also was willing to take on cases that didn’t necessarily mold with his personal political views. He described Roberts’ as a “traditional Catholic” who does not talk about his religion.
“He’s a guy who’ll show up for mass on Sunday and that’s sort of his own business,” said Coffin, who attends the same church.
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