John Roberts

Buffalo first, and then a company town. His father was an electrical engineer at Bethlehem Steel in Lackawanna, and in 1965 the family moved to Long Beach, Indiana, when he was given a new plant at Burns Harbor to run. Roberts went to La Lumiere, a Catholic boarding school in La Porte, captained the football team, wrestled, co-edited the paper and left as valedictorian in 1973, the first La Lumiere graduate to go to Harvard. He entered with sophomore standing and spent his summers back at his father's mill. He read history, won prizes for essays on Bolshevism and on Daniel Webster, turned down a funded doctorate, and finished law school in 1979, having once checked himself into a hospital for exhaustion.

He clerked for Henry Friendly and then for William Rehnquist, joined Reagan's Justice Department in 1981 at 26, and spent part of it arguing for a narrower reading of the Voting Rights Act. Four years in the White House counsel's office followed, then Hogan and Hartson, then principal deputy solicitor general, then one of the country's leading Supreme Court practices. Bush put him on the D.C. Circuit in 2003 and nominated him in July 2005 for Sandra Day O'Connor's seat. Rehnquist died on September 3, Bush switched the nomination two days later, and the Senate confirmed him as chief justice 78 to 22. He has since written the opinion that saved the Affordable Care Act by calling its mandate a tax, the opinion that ended Voting Rights Act preclearance, and the opinion granting presidents immunity for official acts.

He told the Senate in 2005 that a judge's job is to call balls and strikes, not to pitch or bat. The Voting Rights Act is where that gets tested. As a 26-year-old in the Reagan Justice Department he worked to hold Sections 2 and 5 in check. In 2013 he wrote Shelby County v. Holder, which released jurisdictions with histories of suppression from having to clear voting changes in advance, and within five years roughly 1,000 polling places had closed, many of them in majority-Black counties. In April 2026 he joined the majority in Louisiana v. Callais, holding that Section 2 bars states from considering race in drawing districts at all. His defenders call him an institutionalist guarding the Court's standing. His critics answer that the institution he guards has spent 20 years narrowing the franchise.

He is 71, still in the chair, and nothing about him is settled. Commentators wrote his political obituary after Dobbs in 2022, on the theory that six conservative votes no longer need his, and the Court he leads polled at 39 percent approval in July 2025 with the widest partisan gap Gallup has ever recorded. Then, across two days at the end of June 2026, he wrote both halves of the argument about himself: on the 29th, an opinion overruling a 1935 precedent so that a president may fire the heads of independent agencies at will, and on the 30th, an opinion telling the same president he could not end birthright citizenship by executive order.

John Roberts's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 case
  His majority opinion against using race to assign students to schools 2007
• National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius case
  Upheld the Affordable Care Act mandate as a tax, 5 to 4 2012
• Shelby County v. Holder case
  Ended the Voting Rights Act's preclearance requirement 2013
• Trump v. United States case
  Absolute immunity for core presidential acts, presumptive immunity for official ones 2024
• Trump v. Slaughter case
  Overruled Humphrey's Executor and allowed at-will removal of agency heads 2026
• Trump v. Barbara case
  Held that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship 2026

• 1973 aged ~18 Leaves La Lumiere as valedictorian for Harvard He was the first graduate of the school to go there, and entered with sophomore standing.
• 1979 aged ~24 Graduates from Harvard Law and clerks for Judge Henry Friendly He later called Friendly the most influential figure in his life.
• August 1981 aged 26 Joins the Reagan Justice Department at 26 His work included arguing for narrower readings of the Voting Rights Act.
• June 2, 2003 aged 48 Confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
• September 29, 2005 aged 50 Sworn in as the 17th chief justice of the United States Nominated first for O'Connor's seat, then switched after Rehnquist died on September 3.
• June 28, 2012 aged 57 Writes the opinion upholding the Affordable Care Act
• January 16, 2020 aged 64 Presides over the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump He declined to preside over the second, holding that the duty applies only to a sitting president.
• July 1, 2024 aged 69 Writes Trump v. United States on presidential immunity
• June 30, 2026 aged 71 Writes the opinion upholding birthright citizenship One day after writing the opinion that let a president fire independent agency heads at will.

• William Rehnquist 1924–2005
  Chief justice who led the Court’s conservative shift toward federalism and limits on congressional power. clerked for, then succeeded
• George W. Bush b. 1946
  43rd president who led the country after the September 11 attacks and launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. appointed by
• Donald Trump b. 1946
  Businessman, media personality, and 45th and 47th president whose populist movement transformed American politics. ruled for and against
• Ronald Reagan 1911–2004
  40th president whose conservative domestic program and assertive Cold War strategy reshaped American politics. first served the administration of
• Sandra Day O'Connor 1930–2023
  First woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, appointed by President Reagan. was first nominated for her seat
• Thurgood Marshall 1908–1993
  First African American Supreme Court Justice and lead attorney in Brown v. Board of Education. built the law he narrowed