Today in Supreme Court History: January 27, 1955

1/27/1955: Chief Justice John Roberts's birthday.

Chief Justice John Roberts

Comments

[Malika the Maiz]

Hard to believe he’s 70.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Indeed. With his youthful Aryan looks, bland resume, and generic name, he seemed out of play-it-safe conservative central casting. Makes me feel my own age.

[Satchmo_Lives]

Maybe, but Ketanji Onyika with her dark skin, faux African name, and the inability to define a woman is (not seemed) straight out of the woke, box-checking casting directors manual for progressives.

Somebody else can take up Sotomayor.

[Malika the Maiz]

She was smart to have demurred on that definition.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/25/trump-executive-order-sex

[Dan Schiavetta]

It's amusing to see Republicans undone by their own ignorance, but unfortunately it has real world consequences.

[jdgalt1]

Agree on Satchmo. But Sotomayor is doing a good job, at least on civil rights cases. I do not see Sotomayor as a DEI hire.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Aryan?

[Dan Schiavetta]

It was 2005, if you remember what was going on with dark-skinned "foreigners" then.

[Noscitur a sociis]

I certainly remember 2005. I don’t remember anything from back then that would have made John Roberts look or seem Aryan.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Justice O'Connor recognizing a CJ Burger birthday tradition:

The Chief Justice was a man of unusual talents and special qualities. He always had time to offer his colleagues a cup of tea and to share with them some conversation. A glass of good wine to celebrate a Justice's birthday He enjoyed a capacity for unstinting hard work, and he had the vision to set long-term goals.

Roberts had long experience as an executive official and Supreme Court advocate and a short stint (after, like Kagan, he was earlier blocked) on the lower courts. He was about as good of a choice as one could expect from President George W. Bush.

He had a good run until the Trump years. He was not able to meet the moment in recent years though he had his moments.

[F.D. Wolf]

John Roberts is the 17th Chief Justice of the United States. Longest-tenured Chief Justices:

1. John Marshall: 34 years, 152 days
2. Roger Taney: 28 years, 198 days
3. Melville Fuller: 21 years, 269 days
4. John Roberts: 19 years, 120 days (as of today)
5. William Rehnquist: 18 years, 342 days

[Commenter_XY]

So basically, Roberts takes the tenure title at age 86. Sounds do-able, if he eats right, exercises, and doesn't smoke.

[NvEric]

... and regular intercourse ...

[Dan Schiavetta]

Adair v. United States, 208 U.S. 161 (decided January 27, 1908): Congress cannot criminalize sacking an interstate carrier employee for being a union member because membership in a union is not interstate commerce (overruled by Phelps Dodge Corp. v. NLRB, 1941)

Daniel v. Louisiana, 420 U.S. 31 (decided January 27, 1975): holding of Taylor v. Louisiana, 1975, that excluding women from jury violates Sixth Amendment guarantee of fair and impartial jury, does not retroactively apply to other prosecutions (as Douglas points out in dissent, this makes no sense, and holding was eventually overruled, see discussion in Griffith v. Kentucky, 1987)

Wallace v. United States, 133 U.S. 180 (decided January 27, 1890): dismissing Gen. Lew Wallace’s attempt to get paid $10,000 instead of $7,500 as ambassador to Turkey (this is the man who wrote “Ben-Hur”, which according to Wikipedia was earning him $11,000 a year by 1886, $290,000 in today’s dollars)

Clarke v. Haberle Crystal Springs Brewing Co., 280 U.S. 384 (decided January 27, 1930): brewer can’t write off financial collapse due to Prohibition as a business loss

Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp., 571 U.S. 220 (decided January 27, 2014): steelworkers get paid for time spent changing into/out of their furnace clothes (I suppose this would have made the shower discussion in “The Deer Hunter” less rushed)

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Adair v. United States is also a freedom of contract case.

The first inquiry is whether the part of the tenth section of the act of 1898 upon which the first count of the indictment was based is repugnant to the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution declaring that no person shall be deprived of liberty or property without due process of law. In our opinion that section, in the particular mentioned, is an invasion of the personal liberty, as well as of the right of property, guaranteed by that Amendment. Such liberty and right embraces the right to make contracts for the purchase of the labor of others and equally the right to make contracts for the sale of one’s own labor

[Dan Schiavetta]

Usually when Congress's progressive legislation was struck down, it was on freedom of contract grounds. It's odd because the Constitution protects contracts against state interference but not federal. So the 5A Due Process clause had to be pressed into service, which is a stretch, particularly here, because without unions, workers were hardly in a position to form arm's-length contracts.

[A Japanese Student]

I think I've seen somewhere that Contract Clause exists primarily to preserve Federal jurisdiction over bankruptcies. Is that true?

[JoeFromtheBronx]

There is a specific clause giving congressional control over bankruptcy. The Contract Clause is a general limit on state power.

[ducksalad]

Thought it was put in out of fear that states would cancel contracts that were disadvantageous to their own citizens versus out-of-state citizens, or that populists would cancel legitimate contracts if it benefited their debt-owing political base (sounds familiar....). In general there was suspicion that revolutions were just a way to get out of paying off debts.

But, I'm neither lawyer nor historian.

[Dr. Ed 2]

It (and the Constitution as a whole) was a response to Shea's Rebellion -- which would have become a 2nd American Revolution had they captured the Federal Arsenal in Springfield, Massachusetts.

The underlying issue was Revolutionary War debt. The rural farmers lacked hard currency (i.e. gold), most rural trade was barter, and they were losing their farms.

As to revolutions and debt, look up the Committees of Public Safety and what they did.

[Drewski]

Sort of! Both the Contracts Clause and the Bankruptcy Clause were in response to abuses by state legislatures under the Articles of Confederation. They would pass laws to cancel debts of favored or local constituents, often written as bankruptcy exceptions. So the two clauses were reining in the same behavior using different legal mechanisms.

[Syd Henderson]

Re Wallace: $2500 would have been a nice raise even with the royalties. Grant was critical of Wallace for being slow in "Personal Memoirs" but the real problem at Shiloh was that Johnston caught Grant flatfooted on the first day of the battle and Sherman saved his ass. I can't see Wallace did anything wrong.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Interesting. Thanks.

At the time Grant wrote those memoirs he was broke and writing out of desperation. Maybe he was jealous of Wallace's literary success.

[Commenter_XY]

More likely Grant was still pissed about 'Bloody Shiloh'.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Wallace had no way to know that an entertainment industry would emerge which, starting with his chariot race, would have made chariot races and their various derivations into cliches.

Did he foresee NASCAR?

[Dan Schiavetta]

The past few years I've seen truck cabs with long spiky lug bolts that remind me of that chariot in the movie.

[Mr. Bumble]

You need to get out more often. That is not a new thing.

[ducksalad]

Depends what you mean by new. Never saw them at all as a child or college student, and they seemed rare up until maybe 15 years ago. Used to see them mostly on independents but now sometimes on company trucks.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Some states ban them out of concern for Pedestrian safety.

(And lasers work better 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOm8o-6s9hk

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Strict Scrutiny Podcast referenced JB's Justice Jackson musings.

[Bob from Ohio]

Roberts is the best liberal on the Court since Whizzer White.

[not guilty]

Uh, the author of Anderson v. Trump, Trump v. United States and Shelby County v. Holder is no liberal.

Byron White was not much of a liberal either.

[A Japanese Student]

Certified Kokoku-Appeal to Order Denying Protective Order (Third Petty Bench, decided January 27, 2011): In Japan, cases seeking preliminary injunctions are not classified as "litigation" but instead "proceeding under Civil Provisional Remedies Act". At issue was Article 105-4 of Patent Act, which allows protective orders to be issued before introducing trade secrets in "litigation involving the infringement of a patent right". Court holds that despite technically not being a litigation, protective orders can be issued during provisional-remedy proceedings.

Child Pornography Regulation Act Case (First Petty Bench, decided January 27, 2020): Child Pornography Regulation Act does not criminalize depictions of fictional children; upheld conviction for production when the defendant created computer images based on photos of actual children; also holds that the victims need not be underage at the time of defendant's production in such case (Simple possession wasn't criminalized until 2014 because there were too many child porn in circulation; during the 2014 amendment several provisions were added to prevent possible free-speech issues, such as requiring genitals to be "exhibited or emphasized" (in addition to being nude) and adding a rule of construction for legitimate academic, artistic, and news report uses - reminds me of 34 USC 30506)

Tort Claims Case (Second Petty Bench, decided January 27, 2023): Psychiatric hospital not liable for failure to explain to voluntarily admitted patient (who committed suicide outside the hospital) that its gates are open and not guarded

[Dan Schiavetta]

Tort Claims Case: as a former mental health counselor, what strikes me is that there's more to this story!

Thanks again for these daily Japanese cases.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Yes, it would be great if people did something like this for multiple countries, spread around the world, including Africa and Latin America.