Key figures: John G. Roberts Jr. (nominee, 17th Chief Justice), President George W. Bush, Chief Justice William Rehnquist (died September 3, 2005; Roberts’s predecessor and former employer), Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (whose retirement first opened a vacancy), Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA, Judiciary Committee chairman), Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT, ranking member), Associate Justice John Paul Stevens (administered the constitutional oath)
Summary
On September 29, 2005, the United States Senate confirmed John Glover Roberts Jr. as the 17th Chief Justice of the United States by a vote of 78–22. At 50 years old, Roberts became the youngest person to lead the Supreme Court since John Marshall, who was confirmed in 1801 at age 45. The path to his confirmation was reshaped in mid-stream: President George W. Bush had originally nominated Roberts on July 19, 2005, to fill the associate justice seat of the retiring Sandra Day O’Connor, but the sudden death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist on September 3 prompted Bush to redirect the nomination to the Court’s top post two days later. Roberts’s confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee (September 12–15) featured his now-famous comparison of a judge’s role to that of a baseball umpire — “my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.” His elevation began the “Roberts Court” and was the first of two Bush appointments in a single term that would recompose the Supreme Court for a generation.
The Twin Vacancies of 2005
For eleven years — the longest such stretch since the 1820s — the composition of the Supreme Court had remained unchanged. That stability ended abruptly in the summer of 2005. On July 1, 2005, Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the Court and its pivotal swing vote on issues from abortion to affirmative action, announced her retirement, contingent on the confirmation of a successor. Her departure handed President Bush his first opportunity to shape the Court.
On July 19, 2005, Bush nominated John Roberts — a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2003 and a widely respected Supreme Court advocate who had argued 39 cases before the Court — to fill O’Connor’s seat. The formal nomination followed on July 29. Roberts, a former law clerk to then-Associate Justice Rehnquist, was regarded as a careful, credentialed conservative whose thin paper trail of judicial opinions made him difficult for opponents to attack.
The calculus changed on September 3, 2005, when Chief Justice William Rehnquist died at his home in Arlington, Virginia, after a battle with thyroid cancer. Rehnquist had led the Court since 1986 and served on it since 1972. His death, coming just days before Roberts’s hearings were to begin, created a second and more consequential vacancy. On September 5, Bush announced that he would nominate Roberts for Chief Justice instead; the associate-justice nomination was formally withdrawn on September 6 and replaced with the nomination to lead the Court. O’Connor, having agreed to remain until her successor was seated, stayed on the bench into early 2006, when Samuel Alito was confirmed to her seat.
The Confirmation Hearings
The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania with Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont as ranking member, opened hearings on Roberts’s nomination on September 12, 2005, and conducted them over four days through September 15. The proceedings unfolded in an unusual atmosphere: the hearings had originally been scheduled to consider Roberts for O’Connor’s seat, and their reorientation toward the chief justiceship — combined with the national grief and disruption of Hurricane Katrina, which had struck the Gulf Coast at the end of August — lent them added weight.
In his opening statement on September 12, Roberts offered the metaphor that would define public perception of his judicial philosophy:
“Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules, but it is a limited role… I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.”
The analogy framed Roberts as a proponent of judicial modesty and restraint, an interpreter rather than a maker of law. Over subsequent days of questioning, Roberts declined to state positions on matters likely to come before the Court — including abortion and the scope of executive power — invoking the principle that a nominee should not prejudge cases. Democrats pressed him on documents from his service in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations and on his views regarding privacy rights and Roe v. Wade, which he described as “settled as a precedent of the Court” entitled to respect under stare decisis, without committing to uphold it.
The Votes
On September 22, 2005, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13–5 to recommend Roberts’s confirmation to the full Senate. The five dissenting votes came from Democrats; three Democrats on the committee, including ranking member Leahy, joined all ten Republicans in support, signaling that Roberts would be confirmed comfortably.
The full Senate voted on September 29, 2005, confirming Roberts by 78–22. All 55 Republicans voted in favor, joined by 22 Democrats and the chamber’s one independent (Jim Jeffords of Vermont). The 22 votes against came entirely from Democrats, among them the party’s Senate leadership and several senators widely seen as weighing presidential ambitions. The tally was decisive but also revealed a partisan fault line that would deepen with subsequent nominations.
Hours after the vote, Roberts took the constitutional oath of office at the White House, administered by the senior associate justice, John Paul Stevens, in a ceremony attended by President Bush. Roberts took the separate judicial oath at the Supreme Court building on October 3, 2005, formally beginning his tenure in time for the opening of the Court’s new term.
Significance
John Roberts’s confirmation marked the first change in the Supreme Court’s membership in eleven years and inaugurated the “Roberts Court,” which would become one of the most consequential in modern American history. Coupled with the confirmation of Samuel Alito to O’Connor’s seat in January 2006, it gave President Bush the rare opportunity to name two justices — including the Chief Justice — within a single stretch of months, shifting the Court’s center of gravity and fulfilling the judicial ambitions that had anchored his second-term agenda.
Because Roberts replaced the similarly conservative Rehnquist rather than the pivotal O’Connor, his own confirmation did not immediately alter the Court’s ideological balance; the more contested realignment came with Alito’s replacement of O’Connor. But Roberts’s youth ensured his influence would extend for decades: as the presiding officer of the Court, he shaped its docket, assigned majority opinions when in the majority, and became the public face of the federal judiciary. His “balls and strikes” framing entered the permanent vocabulary of confirmation politics, invoked and contested at every subsequent hearing. The events of September 2005 — two vacancies, a redirected nomination, and a lopsided but partisan vote — also foreshadowed the intensifying politicization of Supreme Court appointments that would characterize the following two decades.
Sources
- John Roberts Supreme Court nominations — Wikipedia
- PN801 — Nomination of John G. Roberts Jr. for the Supreme Court of the United States, 109th Congress — Congress.gov
- Roberts sworn in as chief justice, September 29, 2005 — CNN
- “My job is to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat” — CNN, September 12, 2005
- Chief Justice Roberts Statement — Nomination Process — U.S. Courts
- Chief Justice John Roberts — Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center