Justice Owen Roberts
Today’s Justice of the Day is: OWEN ROBERTS. Justice Roberts was born on this day, May 2, in 1875.
Justice Roberts was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the state where he would spend his entire academic and early legal career, and from which he would be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. He received his undergraduate education at the University of Pennsylvania, earning an A.B. in 1895, and attended its law school, receiving a J.D. in 1898.
Justice Roberts spent much of his early career in private practice (from 1898 to 1903) and teaching at his law school alma mater (from 1898 to 1913). He began a three year-long term as First Assistant District Attorney for Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania in 1903, immediately after which he started a career as a private attorney in his home town that would last until his appointment to the SCUS. Justice Roberts also served with the United States Department of Justice, first as Special Deputy Attorney General for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (in 1918) and a Special United States Attorney to investigate the Teapot Dome Scandals (in 1924).
Justice Roberts was nominated by President Herbert Hoover on May 9, 1930, to a seat vacated by Justice Edward Terry Sanford. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 20, and received his commission that day. Justice Roberts took the Judicial Oath to officially join the SCUS on June 2, and served on the Hughes and Stone Courts. His service was terminated on July 31, 1945, due to his resignation.
Justice Roberts is most famous today for his role in the “switch in time that saved nine” in the West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937) case, wherein his decision to switch from voting with the famous Four Horseman Justices (who opposed the New Deal and helped strike down huge parts of it) to voting against them helped sink President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ‘court-packing’ plan (which would have allowed him to appoint a huge number of new Justices to the SCUS, thus defeating the power of the conservative block that kept striking down his legislation). However, there is much dispute over the timeline of that event, with some asserting that Justice Roberts decided to support Washington’s minimum wage law (which was the primary issue in that controversy) before President Roosevelt had even announced the court-packing scheme. While often seen as the ‘swing vote’ (along the lines of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy today) early in his career, he later became a mostly dissenting voice as the SCUS moved to the left thanks to the addition of members like Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas. Perhaps his single most righteous dissent was in Korematsu v. United States (1944), which saw him oppose the majority of his colleagues, who had decided that the mass internment of Japanese Americans was constitutionally acceptable. There is no known relation between Justice Roberts and the current Chief Justice of the United States, John G. Roberts, Jr.