{"id":59,"date":"2026-05-24T23:07:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T23:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=59"},"modified":"2026-05-24T23:07:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T23:07:00","slug":"a-brief-guide-to-each-chief-justice-of-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=59","title":{"rendered":"A brief guide to each chief justice of the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As of last Friday, SCOTUStoday (our weekday newsletter \u2014 subscribe here!) finished providing brief biographies of each chief justice of the United States, starting with John Jay and ending with John Roberts. In light of that achievement (and based on reader requests), we figured we\u2019d provide a synopsis of each biography in one place, so that you can not only impress your friends (and what friends they must be!) but answer a question Roberts himself has admitted that he\u2019s struggled with. So, without further ado, meet each of the 17 men who have led the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Read more Republican legislators urge justices to leave Virginia Supreme Court\u2019s redistricting ruling in place<\/a><\/p>\n

John Jay<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chief Justice John Marshall may get all the attention, but John Jay was there first.\u00a0A successful lawyer in private practice, Jay first made his mark on history as the tensions between Great Britain and the colonies escalated and then exploded. Among other duties, Jay chaired\u00a0New York\u2019s Committee for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies, and directed agents to expose Loyalist schemes,\u00a0which included\u00a0a plot to assassinate General George Washington. He also joined secret talks in Paris in 1782,\u00a0securing\u00a0terms in the (appropriately named) Treaty of Paris that formally ended the Revolutionary War.<\/p>\n

In 1789, George Washington appointed Jay as the first chief justice. At the time this was a rather sleepy job: the nascent court decided just four cases in six years. Having relatively little to do, Jay was able to\u00a0continue\u00a0his diplomatic duties, including acting as secretary of foreign affairs and negotiating the 1794 \u201cJay Treaty\u201d with Britain (which dealt with unresolved issues following American independence). As for Jay\u2019s actual court duties, perhaps his most famous decision was in\u00a0Chisholm v. Georgia<\/em>, written in 1793, in which the court declared that sovereignty rested with the people as a unified nation, not individual states, thus allowing citizens to sue states in federal court. (This ruling prompted ratification of the\u00a0Eleventh Amendment\u00a0limiting suits against states.)<\/p>\n

In 1795, Jay resigned from the court to serve as New York\u2019s governor, where he signed a 1799 act for the gradual abolition of slavery in the state. And although in 1800 President John Adams offered to appoint him again as chief justice, Jay\u00a0turned it down, stating the court lacked the \u201cenergy, weight, and dignity\u201d essential for public respect (or at least the respect that John Jay<\/em> deserved).\u00a0<\/p>\n

John Rutledge<\/strong><\/p>\n

The story of John Rutledge, the nation\u2019s second chief justice, is a rather depressing one. But it didn\u2019t start out that way: Rutledge began his political career as a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress, railing against Parliament\u2019s taxes (oh, how they would rail in those days!). He then served as South Carolina\u2019s first president and governor from 1776-1778 and 1779-1782, with broad emergency powers \u2013 he could effectively do\u00a0anything but\u00a0execute a citizen without trial. Rutledge also played a significant role in the nation\u2019s founding as a delegate at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, where he chaired the Committee of Detail, producing the first complete draft of the U.S. Constitution (written as a report).<\/p>\n

In 1789, President George Washington tapped Rutledge as one of the original associate justices. Rutledge did not hear a single Supreme Court case, however, and a year later he resigned after having to\u00a0ride the grueling Southern Circuit. But Rutledge was not done with the court. When John Jay resigned as chief in 1795, Rutledge lobbied Washington for the top spot and was made chief during a congressional recess.\u00a0Unfortunately, Rutledge almost immediately burned his bridges with a fiery speech disparaging the Jay Treaty with Britain as a \u201cdeath warrant\u201d for the nation, and that he\u2019d \u201crather see [the president] dead than to see him sign [it].\u201d When Congress reconvened, Federalist senators, already whispering of Rutledge\u2019s financial woes and apparent depressive spells (likely exacerbated by his wife\u2019s\u00a0death\u00a0in 1792), denied his nomination to serve as chief justice 14-10, the first rejection of a Supreme Court nominee in Senate history. In 1795, Rutledge tried to drown himself off a Charleston dock but was reportedly saved by two slaves who saw him in the water.<\/p>\n

Oliver Ellsworth<\/strong><\/p>\n

Honestly, we did not remember this fellow was a chief justice when putting these bios together. And that irony is not lost on us, given that we entitled his closer look \u201cThe Rather Memorable Chief Justice Ellsworth.\u201d While \u201cmemorable\u201d may be false advertising in terms of his court tenure, the same cannot be said of his broader contribution to American politics. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when the convention couldn\u2019t agree on how states should be represented in the new government, Ellsworth\u00a0helped engineer\u00a0the Great Compromise (also known as the Connecticut Compromise). As some likely remember from their high school American history classes, the deal established a bicameral legislature: a House with proportional representation (good for large states) and a Senate with two members per state (good for small states). Ellsworth was subsequently elected one of Connecticut\u2019s first two senators. While in that role, he\u00a0wrote\u00a0the Judiciary Act of 1789 \u2013 which established the structure and jurisdiction of the federal court system and created the position of attorney general.<\/p>\n

In March 1796, Washington\u00a0nominated\u00a0Ellsworth to be chief justice. Perhaps most notably, Ellsworth\u00a0favored\u00a0issuing per curiam opinions rather than the court\u2019s practice of \u201cseriatim\u201d ones, where each justice wrote their own separate opinion.\u00a0In 1799, President John Adams\u00a0sent\u00a0Ellsworth, while he was chief justice, to France as a diplomat to negotiate with Napoleon an end to the \u201cQuasi-War,\u201d an undeclared naval conflict between that country and the United States. He did so successfully. But while abroad, Ellsworth fell ill. Citing his poor health, he\u00a0resigned\u00a0from the Supreme Court in December 1800.<\/p>\n

John\u00a0Marshall<\/strong><\/p>\n

John Marshall was the only chief justice who we dedicated two closer looks to, and for good reason. Both his life before becoming chief and his time occupying the center seat were momentous.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the\u00a0oldest\u00a0of 15 children, Marshall was raised in rural Virginia in a\u00a0two-room\u00a0log cabin (because of course he was). In attending the local school he supposedly walked\u00a060 miles by himself (because of course he did). At 19, Marshall left home to\u00a0serve\u00a0in the Virginia Continental regiment. After the war\u2019s end, he joined the Virginia House of Delegates in 1782, supporting both ratification of the Constitution and stronger federal powers \u2013 positions that clashed with those of his\u00a0second cousin once removed\u00a0Thomas Jefferson, who strongly favored states\u2019 rights.<\/p>\n

Approximately seven months after assuming the office of Secretary of State in June 1800, Marshall was appointed chief justice by outgoing President John Adams. As chief, Marshall lost no time in making his mark: During the\u00a0first session\u00a0in which he presided over the court, he supposedly introduced the tradition of black judicial robes.<\/p>\n

Marshall\u2019s most famous case remains \u2013 for good reason \u2013\u00a0Marbury v. Madison<\/em>, where in 1803 the court declared that part of the Judiciary Act of 1789 was unconstitutional and, in doing so, established the power of judicial review.\u00a0But this was far from Marshall\u2019s only notable decision. His opinion in 1819\u2019s McCulloch v. Maryland<\/em> helped establish the supremacy of federal law over state law by holding that Maryland could not tax the Second Bank of the United States and affirmed Congress\u2019 implied powers under the\u00a0necessary and proper clause.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Beyond penning such landmark opinions (he participated in over 1,000 decisions and wrote\u00a0more than 500), Marshall continued to host the justices for dinners in a D.C. boarding house \u2013 and would quip that the court\u2019s vast jurisdiction\u00a0surely included\u00a0some rainy spot, justifying a drink.<\/p>\n

Roger Taney<\/strong><\/p>\n

Roger Taney was a complicated man with a horrific legacy.<\/p>\n

Prior to serving on the court, Taney was (like most of his predecessors) a talented lawyer and successful politician. Specifically, he served\u00a0multiple terms\u00a0in the Maryland House of Delegates as a member of the Federalist party and led\u00a0a section of the Federalists that supported the War of 1812 against Britain. After moving to Baltimore, Taney was appointed the attorney general of Maryland in 1827 \u2013 and staunchly supported (and\u00a0campaigned for) both President Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party, leading Jackson to name Taney as U.S. attorney general in 1831. (For a\u00a0short period of time, Taney simultaneously\u00a0acted as Jackson\u2019s secretary of war.) Taney, like Jackson, was a ferocious critic of the Second Bank of the United States \u2013 and after Jackson nominated him for treasury secretary in 1833, helped to\u00a0cripple\u00a0the institution, requiring that funds be withdrawn from the bank and thereby \u201csealing [its] fate.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1836, Taney was nominated by Jackson as the court\u2019s\u00a0fifth\u00a0chief justice. Today, Taney\u2019s notoriety comes from his 1857 decision in\u00a0Dred Scott v. Sandford<\/em>, where he ruled that 1) Scott, an enslaved man who spent time in free territory, was not free; 2) Black Americans, whether enslaved or free,\u00a0were not and could not be\u00a0citizens; and 3) the Missouri Compromise \u2013 which banned slavery in certain territories \u2013 was unconstitutional.\u00a0The decision\u00a0intensified\u00a0the abolition movement and aggravated tensions between the states and the federal government, culminating in the Civil War. The end of Taney\u2019s career on the court was a contentious one (to put it mildly), in which he and Lincoln sparred over the president\u2019s authority during the Civil War \u2013 with Taney\u2019s efforts ending in defeat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Salmon P. Chase<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like some other chiefs, what Chase did before getting on the court was arguably more impressive than his tenure on the court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Believing\u00a0from an early age that the Constitution was\u00a0fundamentally\u00a0anti-slavery, Chase\u00a0led\u00a0Ohio\u2019s abolitionist Liberty Party \u2013 creating an antislavery coalition that would ultimately contribute to a U.S. Senate nomination in\u00a01848, where Chase would serve one (six-year) term representing Ohio. Following this, he was elected as governor of the state in\u00a01855. As governor, Chase supported\u00a0anti-slavery actions, public education, prison reform, and women\u2019s rights, and was reelected to the Senate in\u00a01860\u00a0\u2013 but left his Senate seat after just\u00a0two or\u00a0three\u00a0days to become secretary of the treasury, to which he was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln. Chase served as treasury secretary until 1864, when he resigned after a series of\u00a0political and personal conflicts\u00a0with Lincoln.<\/p>\n

Lincoln didn\u2019t take it too personally, and shortly thereafter, Chase was nominated by him to the position of chief justice following the death of Taney. As chief justice, Chase\u00a0ruled\u00a0in the 1868 case of\u00a0Texas v. White<\/em>\u00a0that the \u201cConstitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States\u201d and the Southern states had therefore never departed from the Union. But Chase\u2019s heart was not really in the center seat: In 1868, Chase attempted and failed in a presidential bid, and was defeated again in 1872 on a second run. Chase also presided over the 1868 impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson (he was acquitted by one vote).<\/p>\n

Chase\u2019s face still appears on the $10,000 bill, although one may cost you upwards of\u00a0$480,000.<\/p>\n

Morrison Waite<\/strong><\/p>\n

Morrison Waite had at least two things going for him: impressive facial hair \u2013 and a great nickname (\u201cMott\u201d). Less spectacular was his early political career, which consisted of two unsuccessful\u00a0runs\u00a0for the U.S. House of Representatives, in 1846 and 1862. Then, in\u00a01871, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Waite to an international commission in\u00a0Geneva\u00a0tasked with settling U.S. claims against Britain from the Civil War. Apparently impressed by the results, Grant appointed Waite as chief justice \u2013 although only after several others passed.<\/p>\n

The Waite court made its mark enhancing national economic authority (in general, its\u00a0decisions on economic regulation\u00a0supported\u00a0federal commerce powers), and narrowly interpreting the Reconstruction Amendments, prioritizing state sovereignty over federal power. Also of note: in 1888, it\u00a0upheld\u00a0Alexander Graham Bell\u2019s telephone patents in what are known as the Telephone Cases<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Despite having a breakdown in 1885 from overwork and the court\u2019s massive backlog (Waite appealed publicly for relief for the public against the \u201ctedious and oppressive delays\u201d of federal justice\u00a0in 1887), he refused retirement. He died three years later.<\/p>\n

Melville Fuller<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although today relatively unknown, Melville Fuller presided over some of the most important cases in the history of the Supreme Court. (He also\u00a0instituted\u00a0the practice of having the justices shake hands before private conferences and before taking the bench.)<\/p>\n

Fuller passed the\u00a0bar after a brief stint (six months) at Harvard Law School, and then moved west to manage\u00a0Stephen Douglas\u2019 1860 presidential campaign. Fuller also served in the Illinois House of Representatives for two years, was elected\u00a0president\u00a0of the state bar association, and was a\u00a0delegate\u00a0to the Illinois constitutional convention of 1862. (His Illinois House colleagues\u00a0reportedly\u00a0were left unhappy when Fuller publicly opposed their gold pens as a waste of public spending.)<\/p>\n

President Grover Cleveland nominated Fuller to be chief justice in\u00a0April 1888. The Senate took three months to confirm him, with\u00a0concerns\u00a0over his perceived favoritism towards corporations and questionable loyalty to the Union. Two other\u00a0rather unusual\u00a0topics came up during Fuller\u2019s confirmation: his\u00a0\u00a0(Fuller sported quite a mustache), and his penchant for\u00a0poetry. According to the\u00a0Journal of Supreme Court History: \u201carticles asserted that Fuller was a mediocre amateur poet and, as such, was not fit to sit on the high Bench.\u201d Despite these apparent lapses, Fuller was confirmed, and took his judicial\u00a0oath\u00a0in\u00a0October 1888.<\/p>\n

Some of Fuller\u2019s better-known cases include the controversial\u00a0Lochner v. New York<\/em>\u00a0(which\u00a0struck down\u00a0\u2013 on the basis of substantive due process \u2013 New York\u2019s law making it illegal for bakers to work over a certain number of hours) and\u00a0United States v. E.C. Knight Co.<\/em>, which limited \u2013 under the interstate commerce clause \u2013 the scope of the Sherman Antitrust Act that Congress passed\u00a0to break up\u00a0unfair monopolies. But by far the most notorious case of the Fuller court came in 1896 with\u00a0Plessy v. Ferguson<\/em>, which held that state-mandated segregation laws were not unconstitutional so long as the separate accommodations were \u201cequal\u201d for the \u201cwhite and colored races,\u201d and which was not reversed until\u00a0Brown v. Board of Education<\/em>\u00a0almost 60 years later. Fuller joined in the majority decision.<\/p>\n

Fuller served on the court for approximately 22 years, and died in office\u00a0from heart disease\u00a0in\u00a0July 1910.<\/p>\n

Edward Douglass White<\/strong><\/p>\n

The\u00a0first\u00a0associate justice to be elevated to chief justice, White has the distinction of being nominated by two separate presidents: Grover Cleveland (as an associate justice) and William Howard Taft (as chief).<\/p>\n

When the Civil War broke out, the future chief justice, then 15 years old and born and raised in southern Louisiana, joined the\u00a0Confederate Army.\u00a0He was captured twice, and imprisoned in New Orleans \u2013 where he would remain for about a month until Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. Thereafter, White began practicing law, briefly served in the Louisiana state senate, and was appointed to the Louisiana Supreme Court in 1878 (though was kicked out shortly after his appointment for not meeting the minimum age requirement of 35 \u2013 he was 33). Ten years later, White was chosen by the state legislature to represent Louisiana in the U.S. Senate, partly due to his role in abolishing the\u00a0corrupt Louisiana Lottery, which had been granted a charter in 1868 based on supposed bribes to state legislatures.<\/p>\n

White\u2019s best-known cases include those on race and civil rights. He authored the ruling in\u00a0Guinn v. United States<\/em> that rejected certain \u201cgrandfather clauses,\u201d which allowed those whose grandfathers had been able to vote before the 15th amendment was ratified to register to vote without first passing a literacy test. As with his predecessor, however, White joined the majority in\u00a0Plessy<\/em>\u00a0v. Ferguson<\/em>.\u00a0His court also restrained war-related speech (holding that under Debs<\/em>,\u00a0Schenck<\/em>, and\u00a0Abrams<\/em>, speech or activities interfering with the war could be criminalized), and the \u201cInsular Cases,\u201d which held that only some Bill of Rights protections apply within the U.S. territories and remain in effect to this day.<\/p>\n

William Howard Taft<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to easily encapsulate the larger-than-life story of William Howard Taft. The\u00a010th\u00a0chief justice was born in Cincinnati in\u00a01857, the\u00a0son\u00a0of a former secretary of war and U.S. attorney general under Grant.\u00a0Following a resoundingly successful legal and political career, in\u00a01904 Taft agreed to become Roosevelt\u2019s secretary of war, and in 1908 defeated the Democratic candidate, William Jennings Bryan, to become president. Taft served one term, in which the public regarded him as a \u201clarge, genial\u201d fellow. (After being on the court for a few years, he\u00a0remarked, \u201cI don\u2019t remember that I ever was President.\u201d).<\/p>\n

After Republican President Warren Harding won the 1920 election, Harding nominated him to the chief justiceship in 1921 \u2013 which Taft gladly accepted. Taft\u2019s most recognized legal contributions to the court include rulings restricting Congress\u2019 power, such as through\u00a0Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co.<\/em>\u00a0in 1922, which voided a federal law taxing products made with child labor. In the same year, Taft ruled in\u00a0Stafford v. Wallace<\/em>\u00a0that the federal government can regulate certain activities through the commerce clause to prevent unfair competition. And then there is his 1926 decision in\u00a0Myers v. United States<\/em>, which supported the president\u2019s power to remove \u201cadministrative officers\u201d \u2013 an issue at the heart of\u00a0several\u00a0cases\u00a0this very term.<\/p>\n

But perhaps Taft\u2019s greatest impact as chief justice was in the realm of judicial administration, which has earned him the\u00a0designation\u00a0as \u201cfather of the modern U.S. Supreme Court.\u201d Among other things, Taft established the court\u2019s practice of controlling its own caseload, reorganized the structure of the lower courts, and oversaw the construction of the Supreme Court Building \u2013 telling architects to create something \u201cof dignity and importance\u201d (before this, the court was confined to a small space in the U.S. Capitol).<\/p>\n

Taft was the\u00a0first former president, and the first Supreme Court justice, to be interred at Arlington National Cemetery, and remains the only justice to have a state funeral.<\/p>\n

Charles Evans Hughes<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Justice Robert Jackson once\u00a0put it, \u201cHughes looked like God and talked like God.\u201d But he was very human.<\/p>\n

After several years in private practice, Hughes forged a public career in the early 1900s after\u00a0leading\u00a0a pair of high-profile investigations \u2013 one into abuses in New York\u2019s public utilities industry, and the other in the life insurance business. Garnering the support of President Theodore Roosevelt, Hughes ran for governor of New York and was elected in 1906. In 1910, President Taft nominated Hughes to the court, \u201cin part to remove a likely challenger from the 1912 presidential election.\u201d If Taft thought he had politically neutralized Hughes, however, he was wrong: Hughes ran for president in 1916,\u00a0reportedly\u00a0wanting to dispel the notion that he was a man \u201cwho placed his own comfort and preference for the life of a judge above his duty to the nation.\u201d In this, Hughes became the first (and to date, only) sitting justice to be nominated for the presidency by a major party \u2013 though he\u00a0resigned\u00a0from the court after being nominated.\u00a0After running a seemingly successful campaign, Hughes went to sleep on election night after being told by his advisers that he had won \u2013 only to\u00a0lose\u00a0California by a few thousand votes, which swung the Electoral College for Woodrow Wilson.<\/p>\n

In\u00a01930, Hughes was nominated as chief justice by President Herbert Hoover to fill the seat vacated by Taft. Perhaps the greatest test of Hughes\u2019 tenure came in 1937, when he\u00a0navigated\u00a0President Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s \u201ccourt packing plan\u201d to increase the number of justices on the court so as to fill it with sympathetic justices. During this, Hughes worked with Sen. Burton Wheeler of Montana, a Democrat who agreed to lead the opposition to the court-packing bill \u2013 and with the approval of both liberal Justice Louis Brandeis and conservative Justice Willis Van Devanter, Hughes sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee countering the president\u2019s argument that the court needed to be made larger because of the slow pace of its decision-making (\u201ccalmly point[ing] out that the Court was keeping up with its work\u201d). The plan was killed in the Senate that July, and FDR grudgingly remarked that Hughes was the best politician in the nation.<\/p>\n

Read more When (if ever) it\u2019s appropriate to make jokes, take selfies, or curse before the court<\/a><\/p>\n

Harlan Fiske Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stone\u2019s classmates predicted that he would \u201cproceed to be the most famous man\u201d of their 1894 class \u2013 and they were (probably?) right.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Born on a farm in Chesterfield, New Hampshire, in 1872, Stone grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, and graduated from Amherst College in 1894, where he\u00a0played football\u00a0alongside his fellow student (and\u00a0future President) Calvin Coolidge (it\u2019s good to have friends who go on to high places). After law school, Stone divided his time between private practice and academia, eventually becoming dean of Columbia Law School in 1910, where he remained for\u00a013\u00a0years until Coolidge appointed him attorney general in\u00a01924\u00a0and nominated him to the court the following year.<\/p>\n

On the bench, Stone aligned himself with the liberal wing anchored by Justices Louis Brandeis and Benjamin Cardozo, and the three\u00a0came to be labeled\u00a0the \u201cThree Musketeers.\u201d In particular, Stone was\u00a0known for\u00a0his willingness to dissent alone when he believed the court had gone astray. In 1940, for example, he was the\u00a0sole dissenter\u00a0in\u00a0Minersville School District v. Gobitis<\/em>, which\u00a0held\u00a0that public schools\u2019 mandatory flag salute did not violate the First and 14th Amendments.\u00a0(Three years later, the court sided with Stone and overturned\u00a0Gobitis<\/em> 6-3 in\u00a0West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

Yet Stone\u2019s most enduring contribution may have come in 1938 in\u00a0\u201c[t]he footnote that broke constitutional law.\u201d In\u00a0United States v. Carolene Products Co.<\/em>, a case about a ban on \u201cfilled milk,\u201d Stone added what would become the famous footnote four: a suggestion, as explained by SCOTUSblog recurring columnist\u00a0Anastasia Boden,\u00a0that\u00a0\u201claws should be presumed constitutional\u00a0unless<\/em>\u00a0they interfered with \u2018the corrective political processes which can ordinarily be expected to bring about repeal of undesirable legislation.\u2019\u201d\u00a0This would come to take on a life of its own as a general standard for evaluating a measure\u2019s constitutionality.<\/p>\n

After several years on the court, Stone was appointed chief justice in\u00a01941\u00a0by Roosevelt to succeed\u00a0Hughes.\u00a0The role of chief proved harder to manage than his years as an associate justice, however, as Stone struggled to contain\u00a0rivalries\u00a0among his strong-willed colleagues. In\u00a0April 1946, Stone suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while presiding over a session of the Supreme Court and died\u00a0a few hours later\u00a0at the age of 73.<\/p>\n

Fred M. Vinson<\/strong><\/p>\n

Very few Americans have held prominent positions in all three branches of the federal government. The\u00a013th\u00a0chief justice was one of them.<\/p>\n

Frederick Moore Vinson was born in 1890 in Louisa, Kentucky, a small town near the\u00a0border\u00a0of West Virginia and Kentucky, to a southern family of \u201creduced circumstances.\u201d While on the campaign trail a few decades later, Vinson would joke that he was \u201cborn in jail\u201d \u2013 which was not entirely untrue, given\u00a0his\u00a0father worked as the county jailer and the family lived in front of it.<\/p>\n

In a special January 1924 election, Vinson was\u00a0elected\u00a0to Congress as a Democrat. In Congress, he was known as an expert on fiscal policy and became a reliable\u00a0ally\u00a0of the New Deal. In\u00a01938, Roosevelt appointed Vinson to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. But the country\u2019s involvement in World War II led Vinson to move to the executive branch; in 1943, Vinson\u00a0became\u00a0director of the office of economic stabilization, where he helped oversee the wartime American economy and control inflation.<\/p>\n

On June 6, 1946, Truman nominated Vinson to the center seat. Vinson preferred a\u00a0restrained judiciary, encouraging the court to defer to the executive branch when evaluating its actions, whether in matters of free speech (of which he was partly successful) or the president\u2019 seizure of steel mills during the Korean War (of which he completely failed).\u00a0Nor was Vinson able to tame a fractured court: although he was in the majority a staggering\u00a097%\u00a0of the time in one term, only around\u00a030%\u00a0of his court\u2019s decisions proved unanimous (during the Roberts era, that figure is around 42%).<\/p>\n

Vinson\u2019s more enduring legacy, however, lies in the realm of civil rights. In 1948\u2019s\u00a0Shelley v. Kraemer<\/em>, for example, Vinson held that enforcement of \u201cracially restrictive [housing] covenants\u201d\u00a0violated\u00a0the equal protection clause.\u00a0Two years later, in\u00a0Sweatt v. Painter<\/em>, Vinson\u00a0wrote\u00a0for a unanimous court that a qualified Black law school applicant could not be constitutionally denied admission to the University of Texas Law School under the \u201cseparate, but equal\u201d doctrine. And although Vinson\u00a0heard\u00a0Brown v. Board of Education<\/em>, he never got to decide it \u2013 just before\u00a0Brown<\/em>\u00a0was scheduled for reargument, the chief justice\u00a0died\u00a0of a heart attack at the age of 63.<\/p>\n

Earl Warren<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unlike some of the other fellows on this list, Earl Warren is a man who needs no introduction.<\/p>\n

After earning his law degree from UC Berkeley in 1914, Warren spent virtually his entire career in\u00a0public office, first as Alameda County\u2019s district attorney \u2013 where in 13 years he apparently never had a conviction overturned by a higher court \u2013 and then as California\u2019s attorney general. Warren\u2019s record as\u00a0attorney general\u00a0is marred by his\u00a0advocacy\u00a0of the forced internment of over 100,000 persons of Japanese descent during World War II. (In his memoirs, Warren\u00a0said\u00a0that he had \u201csince deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it, because it was not in keeping with our American concept of freedom and the rights of citizens.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Warren was elected California governor for three consecutive terms, and in 1948\u00a0joined\u00a0Thomas Dewey on the Republican presidential ticket as its vice-presidential nominee (but only after turning down Dewey twice). That turned out to be the\u00a0only\u00a0time Warren lost in an election.<\/p>\n

When\u00a0Chief Justice Vinson\u00a0died suddenly in September 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, honoring a promise to Warren that he would make him his first appointment to the Supreme Court (Warren had campaigned for Eisenhower in the general election despite initially running as a potential candidate), named Warren as chief justice.<\/p>\n

From the get-go, Warren was\u00a0able to forge\u00a0relative\u00a0solidarity on the court by pragmatically appealing to the different justices.\u00a0Indeed, in his very first term, Warren authored the unanimous opinion in\u00a0Brown v. Board of Education<\/em>,\u00a0declaring\u00a0racially segregated public schools inherently unequal under the 14th Amendment and overturning the \u201cseparate but equal\u201d doctrine that had prevailed since\u00a0Plessy v. Ferguson<\/em>\u00a0in 1896.<\/p>\n

Warren also participated in, or wrote, several other rulings which dramatically altered the legal and political landscape. In 1964\u2019s\u00a0Reynolds v. Sims<\/em>, Warren\u00a0established\u00a0the \u201cone person, one vote\u201d principle, holding that representation in state legislatures must be apportioned equally on the basis of population \u2013 a ruling Warren\u00a0said\u00a0was his most important contribution to American law. In the criminal realm, Miranda v. Arizona<\/em>\u00a0required police to advise suspects of their rights before questioning \u2013 a ruling shaped in part by Warren\u2019s \u201cclose association\u201d with August Vollmer, the Berkeley chief of police and an early advocate for interrogation reform.\u00a0Loving v. Virginia<\/em>\u00a0struck down bans on interracial marriage, and\u00a0Gideon v. Wainwright<\/em>\u00a0guaranteed the right to counsel for all criminal defendants. And on\u00a0First Amendment grounds, the Warren court produced\u00a0New York Times Co. v. Sullivan<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Brandenburg v. Ohio<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 which, respectively,\u00a0held\u00a0that a public official can only recover damages in a civil defamation suit if the statement was made with \u201cactual malice,\u201d and determined that a state cannot prohibit speech\u00a0unless\u00a0the advocacy is \u201cdirected at inciting or producing imminent lawless action\u201d and is \u201clikely to produce such action.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warren is\u00a0buried at Arlington National Cemetery\u00a0and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981. Although no fan of the Warren Court, even President Richard Nixon\u00a0said\u00a0on the night of Warren\u2019s death that \u201cAmerica has lost one of her finest public servants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warren E. Burger<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first thing to note is that the next chief shared both a first and middle name with his predecessor \u2013 which should be illegal.<\/p>\n

In any event, the\u00a015th\u00a0chief justice was born in 1907 in\u00a0St. Paul, Minnesota\u00a0to a working-class family. To get through night school at the University of Minnesota, Burger\u00a0sold insurance. Actively involved in Republican politics, one of Burger\u2019s most consequential political acts came at the 1952 GOP convention, where he\u00a0helped deliver\u00a0the state\u2019s votes to Eisenhower. The following year, he was appointed by Ike as assistant attorney general and, in 1955, to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. As a judge, Burger became known as promoting \u201claw-and-order\u201d principles amicable to the Nixon administration.<\/p>\n

On May 21, 1969, Nixon nominated Burger to replace the retiring\u00a0Warren.\u00a0Although Nixon\u00a0expected\u00a0Burger to serve as a \u201cconservative constructionist,\u201d the chief justice proved a bit more complicated. As\u00a0some\u00a0note, the Burger court did move the nation\u00a0to the right\u00a0(as compared to the Warren court) \u2013 but it also\u00a0expanded protections\u00a0for privacy and sex equality. Perhaps most prominently, Burger himself voted with the majority in\u00a0Roe v. Wade<\/em>\u00a0in 1973 (indeed,\u00a0three\u00a0of Nixon\u2019s four appointees joined the 7-2 ruling).<\/p>\n

Justice Sandra Day O\u2019Connor once\u00a0singled Burger out\u00a0alongside Taft as one of the chief justices who \u201creally deeply cared about judicial administration.\u201d This led to some significant changes under his tenure \u2013 among other things, Burger discouraged\u00a0justices from reading their full opinions or \u201clengthy summaries\u201d aloud from the bench (estimating\u00a0the practice wasted 300 hours of their time each year), cut the time allotted for oral arguments\u00a0in half\u00a0(from two hours to one), changed the physical bench to a\u00a0U-shape\u00a0(which\u00a0\u00a0during oral argument), and began distributing written opinion summaries alongside decisions. Burger was not Mr. Popular among his colleagues, however, who could find him \u201cmanipulative and aloof,\u201d doing such things as miscounting his own conference votes to\u00a0control opinion assignments.<\/p>\n

Burger retired in 1986, after\u00a017 years\u00a0on the court, to chair the Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution, which took up so much of his time that his wife reportedly asked whether he could get his\u00a0old job back. He died on June 25, 1995, at 87, of heart failure, and (like his predecessor) is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.<\/p>\n

William Rehnquist<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Rehnquist’s elementary school teacher asked him what he wanted to do when he was older, the future chief justice supposedly\u00a0replied: \u201cI’m going to change the government.\u201d\u00a0He most certainly did.<\/p>\n

After high school, Rehnquist served as a\u00a0weather observer\u00a0in North Africa during World War II and then attended Stanford under the GI Bill, where he graduated in 1948 with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science. Rehnquist then received a master’s degree in government from Harvard in 1950, after which he returned to Stanford and graduated first in his law school class in 1952 \u2013 just\u00a0two places ahead\u00a0of his classmate Sandra Day O\u2019Connor, who would later join him on the court (and who Rehnquist had once\u00a0dated\u00a0and proposed\u00a0to).<\/p>\n

Rehnquist\u2019s heavy involvement in Republican politics eventually brought him to the Nixon administration\u2019s Justice Department in 1969 as assistant attorney general.\u00a0Nixon, who\u00a0called\u00a0him \u201cRenchberg\u201d in the Watergate tapes, nominated Rehnquist to the court as an associate justice in 1971, and the Senate confirmed\u00a0him 68\u201326.<\/p>\n

On the court, Rehnquist relied on three \u201crelated constitutional ideas\u201d: \u201cstrict construction\u201d of the Constitution\u2019s text, judicial deference to Congress on questions of policy, and a robust defense of states\u2019 rights. Those convictions put him at great odds with most of his colleagues \u2013 in his first five terms he wrote 24 solo dissents (among 72 total), which earned him the nickname \u201cthe Lone Ranger.\u201d (By 1975, a\u00a0more conservative court\u00a0allowed Rehnquist to write an increasing number of majority opinions.)<\/p>\n

When Burger retired and President Ronald Reagan nominated Rehnquist as Burger\u2019s successor in 1986, the confirmation fight was contentious. In particular, critics raised a\u00a0memo\u00a0Rehnquist had written as a law clerk to Justice Robert Jackson urging that\u00a0Plessy v. Ferguson<\/em>\u2019s \u201cseparate but equal\u201d doctrine not be overturned in\u00a0Brown v. Board of Education<\/em>, and pointed to\u00a0racially restrictive covenants\u00a0in the deeds to his homes. The Senate nevertheless confirmed him 65\u201333, and he was sworn in on the\u00a0same day\u00a0Antonin Scalia was unanimously confirmed to fill Rehnquist\u2019s vacated associate justice seat.<\/p>\n

Despite having once been a lone ranger, Rehnquist presided over an\u00a0increasing rate\u00a0of unanimous cases.\u00a0In terms of major decisions, Rehnquist is perhaps most remembered\u00a0for his efforts to limit Congress\u2019 power \u2013 the chief justice wrote the majority opinion striking down the Gun-Free School Zones Act and applied the same logic five years later in\u00a0United States v. Morrison<\/em>\u00a0to invalidate a provision of the Violence Against Women Act.\u00a0Rehnquist also joined the court\u2019s per curiam decision in\u00a0Bush v. Gore<\/em>, stopping Florida\u2019s recount in a 5-4 decision that\u00a0effectively\u00a0allowed the election to be certified for George W. Bush.<\/p>\n

According to his\u00a0colleagues\u00a0(who proved significantly more complimentary toward him than\u00a0Burger), Rehnquist \u201csteered the Court along a path of responsibility and careful analysis throughout his 19 years as Chief Justice \u2026 and he was able to secure the cooperation and admiration of all of the Justices for the years in which he served\u201d (Sandra Day O\u2019Connor), \u201cwas a good man who epitomized fairness, dignity, and strength of character\u201d (Clarence Thomas), and \u201cwas the fairest, most efficient boss I have ever had\u201d (Ruth Bader Ginsburg).<\/p>\n

John Roberts<\/strong><\/p>\n

And then there is the current chief.<\/p>\n

Born in January 1955 in Buffalo, New York, Roberts attended La Lumiere School, a Catholic boarding school in La Porte, Indiana, in which he captained the football team, wrestled, and\u00a0graduated first in his class. Roberts then attended Harvard College as a history major, and went on to Harvard Law School.<\/p>\n

After a clerkship for then-Justice Rehnquist, Roberts spent two stints at the Reagan White House, first as Special Assistant to the Attorney General and then as Associate Counsel to President Ronald Reagan, before entering private practice at the law firm Hogan & Hartson. Roberts left Hogan to serve as Principal Deputy Solicitor General under Ken Starr from 1989 to 1993, becoming, by Starr\u2019s account, \u201cmy very closest, most trusted adviser.\u201d Returning to Hogan in 1993, Roberts\u00a0argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court, winning 25\u00a0of them.<\/p>\n

After serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for several years, Bush nominated Roberts to the Supreme Court in July 2005, initially to fill the vacancy of retiring Justice Sandra Day O\u2019Connor. When Rehnquist, who was by then chief justice, died on Sept. 3, 2005, Bush withdrew that nomination and re-nominated Roberts to the center chair.<\/p>\n

On the bench, Roberts has authored more than his share of significant opinions \u2013 to put it mildly. But here are a few. In 2012, Roberts wrote the majority opinion in\u00a0National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius<\/em>, which upheld the Affordable Care Act by finding the individual mandate to be unconstitutional under the commerce clause, but valid as a tax. In 2013, Roberts\u2019 majority opinion in\u00a0Shelby County v. Holder<\/em>\u00a0struck down the Voting Rights Act\u2019s pre-existing coverage formula. In 2023, Roberts wrote the 6-2 opinion in\u00a0Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard<\/em>, which held that race-conscious admissions at colleges and universities violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. In 2024, Roberts authored, for a 6-3 majority,\u00a0Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo<\/em>, overturning the 40-year old\u00a0\u00a0doctrine,\u00a0which\u00a0had courts defer to federal agencies\u2019 interpretations of ambiguous statutes. And later that year, in\u00a0Trump v. United States<\/em>, Roberts wrote for a 6-3 court holding that former presidents receive absolute immunity from prosecution for acts within their core constitutional powers and \u201cpresumptive immunity\u201d for other official acts. And most recently, Roberts authored\u00a0Learning Resources v. Trump<\/em>,\u00a0which struck down President Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs in a 6-3 decision. (Roberts also wrote a concurrence in\u00a0, in which he would have declined to overrule\u00a0Roe v. Wade<\/em>, and penned the lead dissent in\u00a0Obergefell v. Hodges<\/em>, in which the court recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.)<\/p>\n

Last term, Roberts\u00a0was\u00a0in the majority in 95% of all cases \u2013 the most of any justice \u2013 and\u00a0did not write a single separate opinion. And although Roberts typically speaks through his opinions, he has been somewhat outspoken (by his own standards, at least) in defending judicial independence. After Trump called a judge an\u00a0\u201cObama judge\u201d\u00a0in 2018, for example, Roberts issued a written statement noting that \u201c[w]e do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.\u201d Roberts also\u00a0presided over Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2020\u00a0\u2013 making him, like Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase and Rehnquist before him, one of only three chief justices in history to perform that duty. And, no doubt to Roberts\u2019 chagrin, there has been no shortage of drama during his tenure, from the\u00a0Dobbs\u00a0<\/em>leak\u00a0to recent tension between the justices themselves \u2013 all during a time where the public is\u00a0largely skeptical\u00a0of how the court is fulfilling its duties.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve made it this far (and, heck, even if you haven\u2019t) please sign up for our newsletter, SCOTUStoday, for news articles and commentary on the court, and even more justice bios to come.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Court rules freight brokers can face negligent hiring suits under state law<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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