Chief Justice Roberts Comes to BYU Law School

posted by Curt Bentley, on October 23, 2007 03:57 pm

The Chief Justice put in a full days work here at BYU today. He spoke at a University Forum in the morning, held a campus-wide question and answer session immediately after that, and then held an hour-long question and answer session with about 1/2 of the BYU Law School from 2:30 - 3:30. That's a big time commitment out of the Chief Justice's schedule, and I'm not sure that many people outside of the law school understood what a big deal it was to have him there.

I attended the forum and the law school Q & A. I was impressed by the Chief Justice's speech and responses to questions, and, surprisingly, was generally impressed by the questions themselves. I have been at too many question and answer session with important speakers where the questions asked devalued the whole experience. At the law school Q & A I thought the questions were ones that prompted some insights about the Chief Justice himself, as well as life on the Court, that one doesn't get from reading opinions or biographies. The only thing I was disappointed in is that there were multiple people who asked the Chief Justice is his policy preferences ever influenced his decisions. One funny moment in the session was his response to that question . . . "do you really expect me to answer yes?" He was adamant that, at least for him, it did not. Indeed, he said that one of things that surprised him most about the federal judiciary was that--despite the academic criticisms of judges as policymakers--all of the judges that he worked with genuinely tried to ensure that the law, rather than their own policy preferences, were enforced.

Another funny moment of the session came in his response to the increasing length of judicial opinions: that he thought it was a problem, but one that he didn't contribute to (he later tempered this assertion). Everyone had a good laugh at that. I thought that the most interesting theme in his responses, however, was concern (although it was always expressed in jest) that cynical law professors and other academics were poisoning law students' (and others) attitudes toward the federal judiciary. While he urged us not to be naive in thinking that a judge's policy views never impacted their outlook and opinion on the law, he also counseled against subscribing to the academic view that a judge's efforts at neutrality are nothing more than a pretense and that the Supreme Court is nothing more than a political institution. Perhaps the Chief Justice's concern was that the academic critiques, coupled with increasing political polarization and pressure, might become a self-fulfilling prophecy within the next generation: if future judges believe that the federal judiciary is only a place where the policy preferences are enforced on society, than that's how they will treat it. If that happens, then, according to the Chief Justice, the great American innovation--judicial review--will be effectively lost.

All in all, the Chief Justice was a great ambassador for the Supreme Court and it made for a very interesting day to listen to him.

Oh, and I did ask a question during the question and answer period. My question dealt with the Chief Justice's attitude toward the increased media coverage of the Court . . . it was an unremarkable question and produced a rather unremarkable answer . . . but I tried!

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