John Roberts Court (2005-present)
John Roberts is the 17th and current Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, succeeding William Rehnquist. Roberts was initially nominated on July 19, 2005 by President George W. Bush, who intended to replace the retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor with this appointment. However, then-Chief Justice Rehnquist died in September 2005, so Bush renominated Roberts for that vacancy. The Senate confirmed him on September 29, 2005, and he took the constitutional and judicial oaths of office shortly afterward. Roberts famously promised judicial restraint at his confirmation hearing, vowing that “I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.”
Shortly after Roberts joined the Court, Justice Samuel Alito filled the vacancy left by O’Connor for which Roberts originally had been nominated. President Barack Obama would appoint the next two Justices on the Roberts Court. These were Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, who replaced Justices David Souter and John Paul Stevens, respectively. Sotomayor became the first Hispanic Justice to serve on the Court.
Controversy shrouded the next two appointments to the Court. When Justice Antonin Scalia died in early 2016, Obama sought to replace him with Merrick Garland. However, this was the last year of Obama’s second term. The Republican Senate refused to consider a nomination by a Democrat President on the verge of leaving office. After taking office in January 2017, Republican President Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch, who was pushed through the Senate despite a Democrat filibuster. In the following year, Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to replace the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. Despite allegations of sexual misconduct earlier in life, Kavanaugh was confirmed by a Senate that largely voted along party lines.
Just before the 2020 presidential election, Trump filled the vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by appointing Justice Amy Coney Barrett. When Justice Stephen Breyer retired in 2022, President Joseph Biden replaced him with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. She is the first female African-American Supreme Court Justice. Breyer’s retirement left Justice Clarence Thomas as the only Associate Justice more senior than Roberts.
Conservatives have celebrated the positions of the Roberts Court on two of the most polarizing issues today: gun control and reproductive rights. Starting in 2008, a series of decisions established a broad Second Amendment right to bear arms. In 2022, the Court broke with half a century of precedent in overruling Roe v. Wade and erasing the constitutional right to abortion. The boldness of this decision has caused some observers to wonder whether other long-established rights may be at risk.
On the other hand, the Roberts Court has rebuffed conservative challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the main legacy of the Obama administration. Popularly known as Obamacare, this law greatly expanded access to health insurance. Liberals also scored a key victory in a 2015 decision by Justice Kennedy, who ruled that the Constitution provides a right to same-sex marriage. This decision preceded the Trump appointments, though, so it may stand on precarious ground under the current Court.
Associate Justices on the Roberts Court:
- John Paul Stevens (1975-2010)
- Sandra Day O’Connor (1981-2006)
- Antonin Scalia (1986-2016)
- Anthony Kennedy (1988-2018)
- David Souter (1990-2009)
- Clarence Thomas (1991-present)
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1993-2020)
- Stephen Breyer (1994-2022)
- Samuel Alito (2006-present)
- Sonia Sotomayor (2009-present)
- Elena Kagan (2010-present)
- Neil Gorsuch (2017-present)
- Brett Kavanaugh (2018-present)
- Amy Coney Barrett (2020-present)
- Ketanji Brown Jackson (2022-present)
Selected Landmark Cases of the Roberts Court:
Author: Neil Gorsuch
Topic: Religion
The Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses protect an individual engaging in a personal religious observance from government reprisal. The Constitution neither mandates nor permits the government to suppress such religious expression.
Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022)
Author: Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
Topic: Due Process; Abortion & Reproductive Rights
The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey are overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.
Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021)
Author: Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
Topic: Voting & Elections
To the extent that minority and non-minority groups differ with respect to employment, wealth, and education, even neutral regulations may result in some predictable disparities in rates of voting and non-compliance with voting rules. But the mere fact that there is some disparity in impact does not necessarily mean that a system is not equally open or that it does not give everyone an equal opportunity to vote.
Fulton v. Philadelphia (2021)
Author: John Roberts
Topic: Religion
A law is not generally applicable under the Free Exercise Clause if it invites the government to consider the particular reasons for a person's conduct by creating a mechanism for individualized exemptions. When such a system of individual exemptions exists, the government may not refuse to extend that system to cases of religious hardship without a compelling reason.
Bostock v. Clayton County (2020)
Author: Neil Gorsuch
Topic: Labor & Employment; LGBTQ+ Rights
An employer that fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender violates Title VII.
American Legion v. American Humanist Ass'n (2019)
Author: Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
Topic: Religion
When time's passage imbues a religiously expressive monument, symbol, or practice with familiarity and historical significance, removing it may no longer appear neutral, especially to the local community. The passage of time thus gives rise to a strong presumption of constitutionality.
Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018)
Author: Anthony Kennedy
Topic: LGBTQ+ Rights
The laws and the Constitution can and sometimes must protect gay persons and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights, but religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and sometimes protected forms of expression.
Trump v. Hawaii (2018)
Author: John Roberts
Topic: Immigration & National Security
The President has broad discretion to suspend the entry of foreign nationals into the U.S. By entrusting to the President the decisions of whether and when to suspend entry, whose entry to suspend, for how long, and on what conditions, Congress has vested the President with ample power to impose entry restrictions in addition to those elsewhere enumerated in the INA.
Matal v. Tam (2017)
Author: Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
Topic: Trademarks
The disparagement provision of the Lanham Act, prohibiting the registration of trademarks that may disparage or bring into contempt or disrepute any persons living or dead, violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.
Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)
Author: Anthony Kennedy
Topic: Due Process; Equal Protection; LGBTQ+ Rights
The Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed outside the state.
Reed v. Town of Gilbert (2015)
Author: Clarence Thomas
Topic: Free Speech
Since content-based laws target speech based on its communicative content, they are presumptively unconstitutional and may be justified only if the government proves that they are narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests. Speech regulation is content-based if a law applies to particular speech because of the topic discussed or the idea or message expressed.
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014)
Author: Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
Topic: Religion; Health Care
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) permits a closely held for-profit corporation to deny its employees the health coverage of contraceptives to which the employees are otherwise entitled by the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, based on the religious objections of the corporation's owners. More generally, protecting the free exercise rights of closely held corporations protects the religious liberty of the people who own and control them.
Riley v. California (2014)
Author: John Roberts
Topic: Search & Seizure
Without a warrant, the police generally may not search digital information on a cell phone seized from an individual who has been arrested.
Fisher v. University of Texas (2013)
Author: Anthony Kennedy
Topic: Equal Protection
Strict scrutiny must be applied to any university admissions program using racial categories or classifications. Once the university has established that its goal of diversity is consistent with strict scrutiny, the university must prove that the means that it chose to attain that diversity are narrowly tailored to its goal.
Shelby County v. Holder (2013)
Author: John Roberts
Topic: Voting & Elections
Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional, and its formula can no longer be used as a basis for subjecting jurisdictions to preclearance.
National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (2012)
Author: John Roberts
Topic: Powers of Congress; Health Care
The individual health insurance mandate under the Affordable Care Act was a permissible use of Congress' taxing power, but the way in which the ACA conditioned all Medicaid funding on states' compliance with a significant expansion was not a valid use of Congress' spending power. Also, the Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to regulate commerce but not to compel it.
Snyder v. Phelps (2011)
Author: John Roberts
Topic: Free Speech
The First Amendment can serve as a defense in state tort claims, including claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Whether the First Amendment prohibits holding a defendant liable for their speech turns largely on whether the speech is of public or private concern, as determined by all the circumstances of the case.
Citizens United v. FEC (2010)
Author: Anthony Kennedy
Topic: Voting & Elections; Free Speech
The government may not suppress political speech on the basis of the speaker's corporate identity. No sufficient governmental interest justifies limits on the political speech of non-profit or for-profit corporations.
Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2008)
Author: John Paul Stevens
Topic: Voting & Elections
Even rational restrictions on the right to vote are invidious if they are unrelated to voter qualifications, but even-handed restrictions protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral process are permissible. A state law's burden on a political party, an individual voter, or a discrete class of voters must be justified by relevant and legitimate state interests sufficiently weighty to justify the limitation.
District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)
Author: Antonin Scalia
Topic: Gun Rights
The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
Boumediene v. Bush (2008)
Author: Anthony Kennedy
Topic: Immigration & National Security
In considering both the procedural and substantive standards used to impose detention to prevent acts of terrorism, the courts must accord proper deference to the political branches. However, security also subsists in fidelity to freedom's first principles, such as freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers.
Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008)
Author: Anthony Kennedy
Topic: Death Penalty & Criminal Sentencing
The Eighth Amendment is defined by the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society. This principle requires that resort to capital punishment be restrained, limited in its instances of application, and reserved for the worst of crimes, those that, in the case of crimes against individuals, take the victim's life.
Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007)
Author: John Roberts
Topic: Equal Protection
The harm being remedied by mandatory desegregation plans is the harm that is traceable to segregation, and the Constitution is not violated by racial imbalance in the schools, without more.
Massachusetts v. EPA (2007)
Author: John Paul Stevens
Topic: Role of Courts; Climate Change & Environment
Since greenhouse gases fit within the definition of “air pollutant” under the Clean Air Act, the EPA has the statutory authority to regulate the emission of these gases from new motor vehicles. Also, a litigant to whom Congress has accorded a procedural right to protect their concrete interests can assert that right in federal court without meeting all the normal standards for redressability and immediacy.
