Rare Interview Sheds Light on Chief Justice
Supreme Court Justice John Roberts gave a rare interview last night on Nightline. Host Madeleine Brand talks to Slate legal analyst Dahlia Lithwick to get her thoughts on the interview.
MADELEINE BRAND, host:
This is DAY TO DAY. I'm Madeleine Brand.
Last night, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts gave a rare television interview. Roberts spoke with ABC News in front of an audience at the University of Miami.
Mr. JOHN ROBERTS (Supreme Court Chief Justice): Last Tuesday, like many of you, I went to the polls to vote. So I went and got in line right behind a neighbor of mine, who smiled and looked at me and said, it's a good thing you're not on the ballot this morning.
BRAND: A little humor there from Chief Justice John Roberts. I am joined now by Dahlia Lithwick, legal analyst for DAY TO DAY and the online magazine Slate. Hi, Dahlia.
DAHLIA LITHWICK: Hey, Madeleine.
BRAND: So this is not a common occurrence, is it, for a chief justice or indeed, any justice to give a prime-time interview. What did you glean from his appearance on ABC last night?
LITHWICK: I think it sort of confirms what I have always suspected about Roberts, Madeleine. Which is, you know, at 51 years old - and that's extremely young for a chief justice - he is of a very different generation than his colleagues on the court, some of whom are in their 80s. He just doesn't have the hostility they have to TV, to technology.
He's figured out, I think, very quickly, and we saw at his confirmation hearings last year, that TV can be your friend and that you can use it in an enormously effective way to get your message out. And so I think while a lot of his colleagues kind of want to hunker down in that marble palace, hide under the bench and hope the TV cameras go away, he's figured out how to sort of launch this charm offensive and to use it to make some, I think, very important legal points that he wants to make.
BRAND: And what were they? Did he give any indication of his legal leanings last night?
LITHWICK: Well, you know, he was very careful not to talk certainly about current cases, not to talk about pending cases. So he talked a lot about minimalism, about unanimity in the court, about how important it is for the court to decide cases very narrowly. In fact, he said that boldness is one of his least favorite qualities in a decision. That rather than boldness, you want to do tiny incremental moves that glean the most support from the majority of the justice to not only offer clarity to courts below, who understand exactly what the law is, but it creates a sort of stability in the case law so that you don't see opinions that veer and careen back and forth depending on the composition of the court. And he's really sounded those notes at a time when that's a very, very popular idea in the public imagination.
BRAND: Dahlia, Roberts is a very smooth and accomplished speaker, but did he say anything that surprised you last night?
LITHWICK: A couple of things stood out, Madeleine. One was, he was very open about how his experiences at Harvard in the 1970s, the experience of going there from a small town in Indiana and the student protests, the anger about Vietnam and Watergate, really upset him. He said he was really offended by the students who seemed to be, quote, "celebrating in favor of our enemies," end quote.
And it's interesting. I think in that sense, he joins former Chief Justice Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito in saying that really, Vietnam was so formative, that student protest on campus was such a defining factor in their subsequent ideological and judicial conservatism.
The other thing that he said that's worth noting is that at that famous incident in 2005, when President Bush nominated him first in July to the seat on the Supreme Court, you'll remember his little son, Jack, hopping around in front of the cameras, essentially stealing his thunder. And Chief Justice Roberts clarified last night for the first time that Jack was not in fact dancing; little Jack was, quote, "being Spiderman" and shooting webs off from his hands.
As the mother of a 3-year-old Superman, I can certainly sympathize. But I think it really did help clarify what was going on with young Jack in 2005.
BRAND: Finally, we know the truth about young Jack.
LITHWICK: The mystery is solved.
BRAND: Dahlia Lithwick, legal analyst for DAY TO DAY and the online magazine Slate. Thanks.
LITHWICK: My pleasure, Madeleine.
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