Chief Justice

The document showing President Abraham Lincoln's personal intervention in a Baltimore treason case during the Civil War was not the only nugget archivist Kellee Green Blake mined from 10 boxes crammed with Baltimore federal court records of the period.Ms. Blake found a record of Maryland's most famous case of the time, the treason indictment of John Merryman of Hayfields, whose arrest in May 1861 provoked a constitutional struggle between Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney and President Lincoln over the suspension of the right of habeas corpus.

Inaugurations are more comfortable the second time around. For President Barack Obama and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., it's not likely there will be a repeat in their encore performance of Chief Justice Roberts' flub of the words in the presidential oath mandated by the Constitution. Four years ago, both the president and the chief justice were doing the presidential oath for the first time. In administering the oath, Chief Justice Roberts misplaced the word "faithfully. " The oath is: "I will faithfully execute the office of the president of the United States," but Chief Justice Roberts put "faithfully" after "United States," momentarily throwing the about-to-be president off track.

BOSTON -- I can only imagine what William H. Rehnquist thinks of all this. When he first became chief justice, a reporter asked about updates on the health of the justices. He shot back: "You people can be like a bunch of vultures." Does Mr. Rehnquist see vultures circling over his black robe as he returns to work part-time: Will he be in court for the new session on Jan. 10? Will he swear in the president on Jan. 20, as he has promised? There is something unseemly about the endless speculation on the health of Supreme Court justices.

Calling DNA collection from those arrested for certain felonies a "valuable tool for investigating unsolved crimes," Chief Justice John G. Roberts on Monday said there was a "fair prospect" that the nation's high court would overturn a Maryland ruling striking down the practice as unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court has not yet agreed to take on the issue, but statements made by Roberts in a four-page opinion signaled that was likely. The Maryland attorney general's office plans to file a petition asking for the court's review by mid-August.

WASHINGTON -- Former Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, a conservative jurist who for 17 years led a fractured and at times surprisingly liberal Supreme Court, died yesterday. He was 87.Chief Justice Burger died of congestive heart failure after a lengthy illness. He served from 1969 to 1985 -- the longest tenure this century -- as the nation's 15th chief justice.President Clinton praised Chief Justice Burger as a visionary chief justice. "His expansive view of the constitution and his tireless service will leave a lasting imprint on the court and our nation," Mr. Clinton said in a statement from Little Rock, Ark.Although the late chief justice was appointed as a law-and-order judge, the "Burger court" of the 1970s and early 1980s is best remembered for rulings that established a woman's right to abortion, ordered cross-town busing for school desegregation, outlawed sex discrimination by the government, upheld affirmative action for minorities and -- at least for a time -- struck down the death penalty.

WASHINGTON - In his first formal statement on the presidential election, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said that the impasse over the Florida ballots "tested our constitutional system in ways it has never been tested before." Rehnquist's annual report to Congress on the U.S. judiciary did not mention the criticism leveled against the high court. Nor did the chief justice, who was in the majority, attempt to defend the 5-4 ruling that rejected a recount of Florida presidential election votes and handed the election to Republican George W. Bush.

WASHINGTON -- It doesn't amount to a constitutional ruling, but Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist has declared that the 20th century will not be over for another year. Still, he may not be so sure. In the chief justice's annual report, released today, he begins by referring to the past century, then adds: "which, I hasten to point out, has another year to run." The Constitution, of course, says nothing about that. And Rehnquist cited no other legal authority. Rather, he found his source in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey."

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Perry Hooper Sr. donned a black robe and took the oath of office yesterday as Alabama's chief justice, becoming the first Republican to hold that office in this century after a bitter legal wrangle that found its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.Chief Justice Hooper, 70, emerged the victor in a struggle between business interests backing him and trial lawyers who supported the incumbent chief justice, E. C. (Sonny) Hornsby Jr., a Democrat who had fought to retain his office for the 11 months since last November's election.

WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. suffered a medical scare yesterday afternoon when he had a seizure and fell on a dock near his summer home on an island off the coast of Maine. Roberts, 52, was taken by a private boat from Hupper Island to the mainland and then by ambulance to Penobscot Bay Medical Center in Rockport. A statement issued by the court last evening said Roberts "underwent a thorough neurological evaluation, which revealed no cause for concern."

WASHINGTON -- John G. Roberts Jr. was sworn in yesterday as the nation's 17th chief justice, succeeding the man he once called "Boss," after the Senate voted by a wide margin to confirm him. Attention quickly shifted to the next vacancy on the Supreme Court. Standing under the chandeliers in the East Room of the White House, Roberts vowed to bear "true faith and allegiance" to the Constitution. He said he hoped to "pass on to my children's generation a charter of self-government as strong and as vibrant" as the one his predecessor, the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, had passed to his own. Roberts and the new justice could bring historic change to a court that has been divided 5-4 on controversial social issues.

Suspects arrested for violent crimes or burglaries will again have to submit to DNA collections, officials with several Maryland law enforcement agencies said Thursday. A day after U.S. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. authorized the practice to resume, at least temporarily, a number of police departments said they had decided to collect samples as they await further word from the high court. Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler has asked the Supreme Court to decide whether collecting the genetic information before a person is convicted violates the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

I high school I learned about our system of checks and balances among the executive, judicial and legislative branches. Now the chief executive of the United States has said the controversial health care bill does not contain any taxes. But the chief justice of the Supreme Court said it does. Meanwhile, the attorney general stands accused of lying to Congress, and the lawmakers who didn't agree with the attorney general's censure just picked themselves up and walked away hand-in-hand to the Mall.

By voting to uphold the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.erased concerns that the Supreme Court had become captive to a political rather than a legal agenda. As he promised to do during his confirmation hearings, Chief Justice Roberts in his decision released today crafted a narrow ruling that showed due deference to the other branches of government. In fact, his view of the most controversial element of the law, the so-called individual mandate - a requirement that individuals purchase health insurance or pay a penalty - cut through the political spin of Democrats in Congress and President Barack Obama.

Seventeen years ago, before he was chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr. argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that a suspect's invocation of Miranda rights should have certain limits. But he never got the chance to find out if the justices agreed because the respondent in the case died, rendering it moot. Now, Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler might be able to get a ruling on that question. Today, Gansler plans to stand before the country's high court, which now includes Roberts, arguing similar principles to those the chief justice raised in 1992, when he was deputy solicitor general.

John G. Roberts Sr., a retired steel executive, former general manager of Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s Sparrows Point plant and father of the chief justice of the United States, John G. Roberts Jr., died yesterday of respiratory failure at his Ellicott City home. He was 80. Mr. Roberts, the youngest of 10 children, was born and raised in Johnstown, Pa. After graduating from high school in 1946, he served in the Army for several years. After earning a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 1951, he began his career with Bethlehem Steel at the company's plant in Lackawanna, N.Y. In 1963, he was promoted to electrical engineer at the company's new plant in Burns Harbor, Ind., and later was superintendent of its electrical department and finally assistant general manager in 1976.

The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America By Jeffrey Rosen The author, a law professor and legal affairs editor at The New Republic, profiles four pairs of contrasting personalities: President Thomas Jefferson and Chief Justice John Marshall; Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Marshall Harlan; Justices William O. Douglas and Hugo Black; and finally Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. Jefferson, Holmes, Douglas and Scalia are Rosen's exemplars of judicially counterproductive temperaments: They are ideologues, too invested in promoting the purity of their ideas to exert long-term influence on constitutional law. Far more persuasive for Rosen are Marshall, Harlan, Black and Rehnquist, distinguished by collegiality and willingness to compromise and to subordinate their own agendas to the prestige of the court.

WASHINGTON - Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist was remembered by President Bush yesterday as a good and gracious man who "earned a place among our greatest chief justices," while his children recalled a father who always saved time for family and fun. "No one smelled more roses than my dad," said James C. Rehnquist, the only son of the chief justice, who died Saturday at age 80. The funeral at St. Matthew's Cathedral was highlighted by stories describing...

CAMBRIDGE -- He joked about how he wouldn't tell lawyer jokes and about the scowl of a famously gruff colleague. He laughed about a case he argued and lost six years ago before Maryland's highest court. And he promised to do all he could as chief justice of the United States to protect the independence of the state and federal judiciaries. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. told the annual meeting of the Maryland Judicial Conference yesterday that threats to the nation's judicial independence are not nearly as direct as those faced by foreign judges he meets who are struggling to establish the kind of legal system that Americans sometimes take for granted.

As Arizona Sen. John McCain zeroes in on the Republican nomination for president, he's trying to woo some of the doubting party faithful with the tried-and-true promise to appoint more conservative judges - in the mold of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. - to the U. S. Supreme Court. That may be reassuring to some, but it isn't to others, like us, who fear that the court's slow race to undercut existing rights could become a stampede. Granted, whether one thinks the court is upholding or undermining fundamental rights and liberties is a matter of perspective, just as judicial activism and restraint are in the eyes of the beholder.

For centuries, judges and barristers in the United Kingdom have come to court wearing white horsehair wigs and long black gowns. King Charles II started the wig trend in England in the 1660s, after admiring the powdered wigs worn in the French court of King Louis XIV. The solid black robe was introduced upon the king's death in 1685. But centuries of tradition may soon come to an end. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, is considering dropping the current formal garb for barristers and judges in civil proceedings to make the court more consistent with those around the world.