WASHINGTON. — John Roberts was not supposed to be the US Chief Justice. When President George W. Bush nominated him to the US Supreme Court in 2005, it was as one of the nine-member body’s eight associate justices. But when then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist died just weeks later, Bush decided to tap Roberts for the job.
In the 20 years since becoming chief justice on September 29, 2005, Roberts has established himself as a pivotal figure in the court’s history, guiding it during a momentous epoch when its conservative majority has steered US law dramatically rightward. And there are no signs of letting up as a new nine-month term dawns in October with more major cases awaiting.
The Roberts Court has made its mark in areas such as abortion, gun rights, race, religious liberty, campaign finance law, federal regulatory authority, transgender policy and presidential immunity. This year, it has also issued a series of decisions buttressing Republican President Donald Trump’s extraordinary exertion of executive power.
Roberts, a mannerly conservative raised in the American Midwestern heartland, has long been seen as an institutionalist who preferred incremental change. But the rush of major rulings in the five years since conservatives gained a 6-3 majority on the top US judicial body in 2020 after Trump was able to appoint three justices in his first term in office represents nothing short of a revolution in American jurisprudence.
Critics of Roberts, 70, have accused him of distorting the law to achieve his policy preferences. Eric Segall, a Georgia State University law professor, has argued that Roberts “changed the rules of the constitutional game” as much or more than any chief justice in US history.
Roberts, for instance, has been instrumental in expanding presidential power, notably in the 2024 decision he wrote favoring Trump that recognized that presidents possess immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions in office. Roberts wrote that such immunity was required in light of the US constitutional structure separating powers among the government’s executive, legislative and judicial branches.
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent that the ruling effectively created a “law-free zone around the president.”
“In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law,” Sotomayor added.
Conservative legal experts counter that the Roberts court has corrected what they consider some poorly reasoned liberal precedents set decades ago by the court, such as the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
“The Roberts Court is the most conservative court in 100 years, and it has laudably corrected major jurisprudential mistakes in abortion, affirmative action, guns and the administrative state. While conservatives may not have won every major policy battle at the court, the consensus is they have won the war – at least for now,” George Mason University law professor Robert Luther III said.
“Conservatives overwhelmingly welcome the court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, its ruling that the (US Constitution’s) Equal Protection Clause bars racial preferences in college admissions, and its various rulings on religious liberty,” said Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who served as a Bush administration Justice Department official.
Roberts has personally written the decisions in some of the biggest cases decided in the past two decades, though on occasion, he has been more cautious than some of his fellow conservative justices.
“The modern conservative legal movement had been trying for a half-century to achieve the changes in American constitutionalism that have come under John Roberts, and he has played a significant leadership role in bringing those things about,” University of Pennsylvania political science professor Rogers Smith said.
The Roberts Court has been a friendly venue for Trump this year in decisions it has issued on an emergency basis, allowing the president to implement hardline policies that had been impeded by lower courts on immigration, mass federal layoffs, banning transgender people from the military, cracking down on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and other areas.
