Download The Supreme Court under John Roberts has been

John Roberts
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17th and current Chief Justice of the United States
Appointed on September 29, 2005
Nominated by President George W. Bush
Known to have a Conservative Judicial Philosophy in his jurisprudence.
Harvard Law Student
Practiced in Private Law Firms
Worked behind the scenes for gay rights advocates, reviewing filings and
preparing arguments for the Supreme Court case Romer v. Evans (1996),
- The Supreme Court under John Roberts has been coined as ‘one of the most
conservative in history’
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Attended A Catholic boarding school, then Harvard College for a history degree
followed by Harvard Law School
After his law degree, he served in several positions under the Reagan administration
He then worked privately for several causes including gay rights and the homeless
He then served in George H W Bush’s administration and again returned to private practice
He twice nominated for positions on the DC Circuit by Bush Jr and Sr, but was rejected
due to Democrat Congresses
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Important Court Cases
Graham v. Florida
When Terrence Graham was 16 years old he was convicted of armed burglary and
attempted armed robbery. He served a 12 month sentence and was released. Six months
later Mr. Graham was tried and convicted by a Florida state court of armed home robbery
and sentenced to life in prison without parole. On appeal, he argued that the imposition of a
life sentence without parole on a juvenile, on its face, violated the Eighth Amendment and
moreover constituted cruel and unusual punishment, and thus violated the Eighth
Amendment. The District Court of Appeal of Florida disagreed. It held that Mr. Graham's
sentence neither was a facial violation of the Eighth Amendment nor constituted cruel and
unusual punishment.
Baze v. Rees
Two Kentucky inmates challenged the state's four-drug lethal injection protocol. The lethal
injection method calls for the administration of four drugs: Valium, which relaxes the convict,
Sodium Pentathol, which knocks the convict unconscious, Pavulon, which stops his
breathing, and potassium chloride, which essentially puts the convict into cardiac arrest and
ultimately causes death. The Kentucky Supreme Court held that the death penalty system
did not amount to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.
Boumediene v. Bush
In 2002 Lakhdar Boumediene and five other Algerian natives were seized by Bosnian police
when U.S. intelligence officers suspected their involvement in a plot to attack the U.S.
embassy there. The U.S. government classified the men as enemy combatants in the war on
terror and detained them at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which is located on land that
the U.S. leases from Cuba. Boumediene filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, alleging
violations of the Constitution's Due Process Clause, various statutes and treaties, the
common law, and international law.
In 2006, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA). The Act eliminates
federal courts' jurisdiction to hear habeas applications from detainees who have been
designated (according to procedures established in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005) as
enemy combatants. When the case was appealed to the D.C. Circuit for the second time, the
detainees argued that the MCA did not apply to their petitions, and that if it did, it was
unconstitutional under the Suspension Clause. The Suspension Clause reads: "The
Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of
Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."
The D.C. Circuit ruled in favor of the government on both points. It cited language in the
MCA applying the law to "all cases, without exception" that pertain to aspects of detention.
One of the purposes of the MCA, according to the Circuit Court, was to overrule the
Supreme Court's opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which had allowed petitions like
Boumediene's to go forward. The D.C. Circuit held that the Suspension Clause only protects
the writ of habeas corpus as it existed in 1789, and that the writ would not have been
understood in 1789 to apply to an overseas military base leased from a foreign government.
Constitutional rights do not apply to aliens outside of the United States, the court held, and
the leased military base in Cuba does not qualify as inside the geographic borders of the
U.S. In a rare reversal, the Supreme Court granted certiorari after initially denying review
three months earlier.