“Well, it’s about time”: July 8, 1981, newspaper cartoon by Herblock marking the confirmation of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Court.
MR. DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN (DR): We’re very honored tonight to have the chief justice of the United States, John Roberts. Thank you very much for coming. We won’t take it as a comment on anything he says if some people get up and leave between nine and nine-thirty, because we understand there might be a Senate vote.
CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN G. ROBERTS JR. (CJR): Or a World Series game, one or the other.
DR: You labor very hard on your opinions, obviously. But you got the most attention I’ve seen recently for a speech you gave at the ninth-grade commencement of your son. Why did that speech go viral? What did you say that got so much attention from everybody?
CJR: I didn’t even know it was being filmed. What may have caught some eyes is that it was ninth grade, so it was different than most commencement speeches. You can’t tell the students that they have reached a great milestone or that they are about to go out into the world. I had to think about what was suitable for them.
It occurred to me that the start of high school is an important time. For a lot of people, character is really shaped in high school. College will test your character, of course. But in high school you have to go through a few rough things, and it shapes what you’re going to be like.
DR: You told the ninth-graders you hoped that they failed—that you hoped they weren’t successful because they would learn more from that.
CJR: If you fail at things in high school, it is usually not that dramatic. I wished them bad luck—because if you experience that, you come to realize that chance plays an important role in life, and you can decide to be bitter about it or you can decide to understand that success is not entirely due to one’s own efforts, and neither is failure.
DR: At least from the outside, it doesn’t seem like there have been a lot of failures in your life. You were a superstar student. You’re the chief justice of the United States. Let’s talk about your background. You’re from Indiana?
CJR: I was born in Buffalo but grew up in Indiana.
DR: Were you a good student in high school? I assume you were pretty good.
CJR: The eighth-grade class from my elementary school comes and visits the court every year, and one year they brought my permanent record. I mean, it is a permanent record.
To be honest, I expected it to be pretty good. It was mixed. There was one year when I had good grades except for one D from what I figure must have been a conduct issue.
DR: You must have done well in high school. You got into Harvard. When you got there, did you realize that either everybody there was smarter than you or that you were smarter than most of the other people there?
CJR: There were some very smart people there. People like Yo-Yo Ma were in my graduating class.
DR: Wow! Did you know him then?
CJR: No, no. Bill Gates was also in my entering class. He didn’t graduate, of course. Think how well he could have done if he had stayed in school.
DR: You graduated in three years. How do you graduate from Harvard in three years?
CJR: It is not that dramatic. If you took enough Advanced Placement tests and did well enough on them, you could skip your first year.
DR: When you graduated, did you decide to do a gap year, or did you want to go right to law school?
CJR: I went straight to law school. The idea of gap years wasn’t very common, and my father wasn’t that sympathetic to it.
DR: Were there lawyers in your family?
CJR: No.
DR: What propelled you to go to law school? Did you know when you went to Harvard you wanted to go to law school?
CJR: No. I didn’t want to go to law school. I wanted to be an historian. I enjoyed history and thought I could make a career out of it.
I was driving back to school from Logan Airport in Boston one day and I talked to the cabdriver. I said, “I’m a history major at Harvard.” And he said, “I was a history major at Harvard.”
DR: So you decided to go to law school.
CJR: I thought I would move to law.
DR: I went to law school. In the first year of law school—really in the first month or two—you realize certain people have the ability to quickly do legal reasoning. They have the knack of it, and some people don’t. You must have realized that it wasn’t as hard as you had thought it would be.
CJR: It was as hard as I thought it would be. It was pretty hard throughout.
DR: But you made the Harvard Law Review, which meant you were near the top of your class, and so you got a clerkship. Did you know when you were in law school that you wanted to be a judge?
CJR: I thought I would practice law. The idea of being a judge did not cross my mind.
DR: You clerked for a very famous judge named Judge Friendly, who was probably the most famous federal court of appeals judge. How was that experience?
CJR: It was transformational. It really was. Harvard Law School, at the time, the late seventies, was a pretty cynical place. I think it’s changed somewhat. But then, it left students with the sense that the law was either the means by which the upper class oppressed the lower class, or it was a tool that could be manipulated to promote particular causes. So I left law school not thinking it was a particularly noble calling.
That changed with Judge Friendly. He was somebody who did think that the law had stature of its own, independent from the uses to which it could be put; that the law was something very noble, that laws were the wise restraints that make men free.
To see him not only believe that but also practice it at the highest level changed my view of the whole profession.
DR: After that you got a clerkship with Justice William Rehnquist. Was he the chief justice at the time?
CJR: No, no.
DR: What was it like clerking for him?
CJR: It was a very different experience. I was not close in age to Justice Rehnquist, but he was at most a generation removed from his law clerks, and Judge Friendly was a couple of generations removed.
It was very easy to clerk for Justice Rehnquist. We did not have to do bench memos. He did a lot of the work without the need for a law clerk. He was very crisp in logic and writing style. He had really a whole different style than Judge Friendly, but I was very fortunate to have both clerkships.
DR: When Rehnquist was chief justice later, he was famous, I am told by some of his clerks, for having betting pools on everything. Did he do that when he was a younger justice?
CJR: Yes.
DR: Always betting on various sporting events?
CJR: It was worse than that. He would bet you when the first snowfall would be. Or how deep the snow was, and then you’d get outside with a ruler and measure it. The bets were usually shaped in such a way that he had a real advantage in terms of knowledge.
DR: After you finished your clerkship, you went to work at the Justice Department, and later you went to work in the Reagan White House. I’m told that the first day you showed up at the White House, the president of the United States was supposed to call you. What happened?
CJR: The phone rang, I picked it up, and the operator said, “Could you hold for the president?” I said, “Yes.” I thought it was very nice that President Reagan would call someone on his first day just to say hello.
I was holding a little while, then holding longer, and then I started to think, “How long should I hold?” I thought, “Maybe he’s talking to the Soviets,” or that he was held up by something else important going on. And so I waited on hold some more. I waited on hold a long time.
Then, all of a sudden, I heard laughter outside the door to my office. My new officemates had a pool about how long I would just sit there and wait on hold. I don’t know who in the pool had fifteen minutes, but he won.
DR: You did that for a while, and then you went to practice law in Washington. Then you became a litigator and a Supreme Court appellate lawyer?
CJR: There are some very good trial lawyers here, and I wasn’t one of those. I liked to do appellate work, but it really was not a specialty then. You didn’t say, “I do appeals.”
Usually the lawyer who tried the case would handle the appeal, so I looked to develop a practice like that. I worked with a more senior lawyer, a fellow named Barrett Prettyman Jr., who did have that kind of practice. I hoped to emulate him.
DR: Then George Herbert Walker Bush becomes president, and you get a job in the Solicitor General’s Office as deputy solicitor general of the United States and you’re arguing before the Supreme Court regularly. Was that an intimidating experience?
CJR: Yes. It is absolutely terrifying. I remember the minute before ten o’clock, when the justices are about to come out on the bench, just thinking, “Why am I doing this?” But then as soon as you sit down, you wonder, “When can I do it again?” It is a very special opportunity.
DR: How long does it take to prepare for an argument in the Supreme Court? A week?
CJR: Oh, no, no. If you can arrange it, a couple of months, because there are nine justices. They can ask anything they want. They do. It was a very, very hot bench, as it is today. You just cannot anticipate every hypothetical, every factual question.
I started a fresh legal pad whenever I had a new case, and I would just write down every question that occurred to me. By the time of the argument, I would have five hundred questions I had prepared to answer. But I still realized they were going to ask some questions that were not on my list.
DR: So you did that for a while. Then the president of the United States said, “I’d like you to be a judge on the D.C. circuit.” You were sent up to the Senate for confirmation. What happened?
CJR: The election of 1992 happened. I did not get a hearing before the election, and the president lost, so that was it.
DR: So you went back to practicing law. At that point, did you think your legal career as a jurist was never going to happen?
CJR: I did not think the bus would stop on my block again, no.
DR: So you practiced mostly Supreme Court law?
CJR: Yes. Having been in the Solicitor General’s Office, I had experience, and so it was a little easier to do.
DR: Then you get an opportunity to get on the bench again. George W. Bush becomes president, and in 2001 he nominates you to be on the D.C. circuit. Did you get confirmed pretty readily?
CJR: Well, I wouldn’t go that far.
DR: So you’re on the bench for about two years. There’s a Supreme Court vacancy in 2005 when Justice Sandra Day O’Connor decides to retire. President Bush has some interviews with potential nominees. You had an interview. What was that like?
“Well, it’s about time”: July 8, 1981, newspaper cartoon by Herblock marking the confirmation of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Court.
CJR: I was very impressed by the president. It was a much more substantive discussion than I had expected. He had a very considered, educated view of the courts and their relationship with the other branches. I was just very, very impressed. After our conversation, we went out to the Truman Balcony of the White House. It was an uplifting moment. I felt proud to be an American.
But I was teaching a summer session in London at the time, and when the interview was over, I got on the plane and flew back to London to finish the class, because I did not expect to be chosen.
As soon as I got there, the White House staff said, “You need to come back again.” But they were very careful. They said, “This doesn’t mean you’re going to get the job.” I thought maybe they were still looking at a couple of people.
It was a traumatic day because it was the day, in 2005, of the London subway bombing, and I was near the cordoned-off site of the attack.
I figured if I returned to Washington I was not going to come back to London again, so I got all my stuff. It was hard to get a cab. I got to Heathrow, and there was this very long line of people waiting for a plane.
I remember walking to my flight thinking, “Oh, these poor people. They’re stuck here.” That was the line for my plane. The computers had all broken down.
I did not think I was going to get out in time. I knew that White House and that president. If the president’s first-choice nominee was late, I thought he might well just nominate the next person on his list.
Eventually I got on the plane, but it was very late. I landed at Dulles Airport and made it home just in time to answer the phone call. It was Harriet Miers, the White House counsel. I was a little disappointed, because I assumed she was calling people who did not get the job. But then the president came on the line and offered me the nomination.
DR: You had a ceremony at the White House, and your son stole the show, as I remember it. He was about four or five?
CJR: Five.
DR: Five years old. You and the president were talking, and your son was running around in front of you. Was that distracting to you and the president?
CJR: To both of us, as I found out. Jane, my wife, was there with the kids, and I looked over and our daughter, Josie, was holding her hand—and Jack was not there. He was in front and he was dancing around. In retrospect, it is cute. At the time, it was not.
DR: Shortly thereafter, Chief Justice Rehnquist dies. The president called you and said, “How would you like to be more than just a justice—to be chief justice?” You didn’t have to do another interview?
CJR: Yes. It was a very emotional time.
Chief Justice Rehnquist died on a Saturday. My hearings were set to begin on the Tuesday. I got the call that Chief Justice Rehnquist had passed away, and President Bush invited me to the White House to talk about it Sunday night. Monday morning my nomination to be chief justice was announced. And Tuesday I was walking up the steps to the court carrying Chief Justice Rehnquist’s casket. So there was a lot going on in those few days.
DR: When you had your confirmation hearing, you famously said that you were going to be like an umpire. Is that because you like baseball? How did that metaphor or analogy come to you?
CJR: A lot of law professors have written articles about how ridiculous the analogy was. They said I did not sufficiently appreciate how difficult it was to be a judge. And I think they did not sufficiently appreciate how difficult it is to be an umpire.
I don’t think it is a naïve analogy. Basically, you want to make sure you understand that an umpire doesn’t make the rules. He applies them. The courts are not Congress. You are not on either team when a case is in front of you.
DR: So you are confirmed. You were the newest and youngest member of the court and also the chief justice. Was that a little awkward?
CJR: The scenario was worse than that. The court had been together for eleven years without any change, the longest time in modern Supreme Court history. The other justices were all older than I was. They all had vastly more judicial experience than my two years. And I had been arguing cases in front of them, so I literally had been beneath them looking up. To come in as the chief was a little daunting.
I will always be grateful for how they made me feel welcome and comfortable. In conference, the chief justice presents the case and says what he thinks ought to be done, but I did not know quite how it worked. So at my first conference, I called on “Justice Stevens” and then “Justice O’Connor.” Then Justice Scalia said, “What is all this? That’s John. That’s Sandra. I’m Nino.” And, he said, “You’re the Chief.”
It was a real gripping moment to realize I had the support of the court—not because they thought I was in any way superbly qualified for the position, but they realized that somebody had to occupy that role, and they were going to be supportive of me in doing that. And it meant a lot to me.
DR: Explain how the court decides what cases it’s going to hear. What is a writ of certiorari?
CJR: It’s an old law term. And that’s all I know.
We get about 8,500 to 9,000 of these petitions every year from people who want us to hear their case, and we will hear fewer than 1 percent of those cases. There are some that we will almost surely take. If a lower court has held an act of Congress unconstitutional, we will decide that question as a matter of comity with the legislative branch across the street.
Typically, though, it is a conflict question. To take the simplest example, if the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California says you can deduct these taxes on your federal return and the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York says you cannot do so—it has to be the same answer throughout the country, so we will take that case.
Which is why a lot of the cases on our docket are not terribly interesting. They are conflicts in interpretation of federal laws that need to be resolved. That is the easiest way to get a case brought to the court.
DR: You need four justices to agree to hear a case.
CJR: Right.
DR: Do you actually talk about the cases you’re going to hear?
CJR: We review 150 cases a week. All the justices look at them, through whatever system each justice has, and we put on the “discuss list” all cases anyone wants to talk about. Of those 150 for each weekly conference, there might be a dozen that we will want to talk about, and we talk about each of those.
DR: Let’s suppose you’ve agreed to hear a case and the case is argued. Before the argument, does every justice actually read all the briefs? Or do they skim them? They can’t read all the amicus briefs, I assume.
CJR: Sometimes we can. In some cases, there will be six or seven amicus briefs, and we can read those. In one of the big marquee cases, there might be eighty amicus briefs. I do not read that many. I do read the summary of argument of each one.
And I will pick ones that I think are important. If it is a labor case, for example, I will likely read an amicus brief from a national labor union because of its perspective. Then my law clerks will read all eighty of the briefs, and they’ll say, “You should read these seven or eight.”
DR: Before the oral arguments, the justices do not talk about the cases other than when they granted the writ of certiorari?
CJR: Certainly not in any formal way—not at conference and not walking down the halls. People come to the arguments on their own.
DR: When an argument is being made in front of the Supreme Court, the justices ask questions. Are they asking questions because they want the answers or because they want to influence other justices, or do they just want to make a public point?
CJR: We do not ask questions to make public points, but we ask questions for a number of different reasons. Sometimes you just have a question and you want to know the answer. Sometimes you have formulated in your mind a tentative view, and you think, “Well, it does depend on this,” and you will ask that question.
If a justice asks a question and it reveals to me that the justice is focused on something in a particular way, and I see it differently, I might ask a follow-up question so that the lawyer can have an opportunity to make us all comfortable with an answer.
Sometimes it is like Wimbledon. I remember one exchange—I think it was between Justice Scalia and Justice O’Connor. Justice O’Connor says, “I don’t think there’s any jurisdiction here.” And before the lawyer can answer, Justice Scalia jumps in and says, “Well, there’s diversity between the corporations, isn’t there?” And before the lawyer can answer, Justice O’Connor jumps in and says, “Well, but the corporation’s principal place of business is here, isn’t it?” The lawyer is standing there looking back and forth.
Finally it gets to the point where Justice O’Connor asks another question, and the lawyer turns to look at Justice Scalia. He leans over and says, “You’re on your own.”
DR: When a justice asks a question and the lawyer says, “I’ll get to that later,” that’s a bad answer, right?
CJR: Yes. That does not usually work.
DR: Are justices’ opinions really changed by oral argument, or does it really not affect the outcome?
CJR: Oral argument is a very important part of the process. I had been on the arguing side for twenty years, so I would have been very disappointed if that turned out not to be the case.
It is part of a process of winnowing down. You read the first brief, you think, “Well, that sounds right.” You read the other side’s brief: “Well, maybe that’s right.” The oral argument is part of the winnowing down until you get to a decision point.
You may have particular issues you want to talk about. You might have hypotheticals to illuminate them. You learn for the first time what your colleagues think. It is the first time you learn, for example, that Justice Neil Gorsuch might think there is a jurisdictional issue. You hadn’t thought about it, so you react to that. And you might have thought you knew how one justice was going to proceed, but his questioning reveals a totally different perspective, so you look at that.
It is very, very hard for the advocates because they have to juggle all these different data points. But it is exhilarating. I enjoyed being on both sides.
DR: We have a Supreme Court Bar in the United States now. We had one at the beginning of the country’s history. Do you ever feel sorry for the lawyer who has never argued in front of the Supreme Court and just doesn’t know how to do it?
CJR: If they do not know how to do it, yes. But there is a sophisticated Supreme Court Bar. It is very, very good. We are very fortunate that we have lawyers who specialize in that practice, because it is not like arguing in a state court or even a court of appeals. In a half hour there will be a hundred questions and you have to know how to field them.
We all have a romantic image, a sort of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington image of the lawyer with the battered briefcase, and he’s there alone. That happens sometimes.
I remember one occasion in which a lawyer said, “Well, that’s pretty much all I have. I just want to say this has been the experience of my life.” I do not remember if he won or not. But it takes an enormous amount of work, and for a sole practitioner to devote months to preparing—you just cannot do it.
DR: Can you tell when an experienced Supreme Court practitioner is making an argument only to win the vote of a justice who it’s well known has a certain view? Is that apparent to the other justices?
CJR: Yes. An experienced Supreme Court advocate will not do that. You really do have to have an overarching concept of your case. If you say, “Oh, Justice So-and-So, you did this…,” that will annoy the other justices.
DR: How long after the oral argument do you have a conference about the case?
CJR: Two days. Cases we hear on Monday, we conference Wednesday afternoon. Tuesday and Wednesday cases, we conference on Friday morning.
DR: How long is a conference, typically?
CJR: On Friday morning, we also look at what cert petitions to take. So that takes up the whole morning. Wednesday afternoon, it is just two cases. When there is a big case, it can take several hours. On the other hand, for a straightforward case, it might take a half hour.
Left to right: Attorneys George E. C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall (the future Justice), and James M. Nabrit on the steps of the Supreme Court following the 1954 decision declaring school segregation unconstitutional.
DR: When you’re in conference, nobody other than the justices is allowed in the room. Is that right?
CJR: Right.
DR: If somebody knocks on the door, who’s supposed to answer that?
CJR: Justice Gorsuch now. It is the most junior justice. For some time after Justice Gorsuch joined the court, Justice Kagan would instinctively get up, and we had to remind her to sit down.
DR: I understand that the most junior justice is also in charge of the Cafeteria Committee.
CJR: Right.
DR: And that’s a very prestigious position?
CJR: No, no, it is part of the hazing ritual. There is the loftiness of being nominated to be a member of the Supreme Court and being confirmed, and then you go meet with the Cafeteria Committee. Somebody has to do it.
DR: As the chief, you start the conference discussion. Does everybody get asked their opinion in order of seniority?
CJR: Right. We just go around the table. The rule I apply is that no one speaks twice until everyone has spoken once. That is the tradition. Usually there needs to be a second round, or people will have other points they want to make in reaction to points they did not have a chance to respond to.
DR: After you hear everybody’s arguments, if you’re in the majority, you then assign the opinion to somebody?
CJR: At the end of the two-week session, because I need to know who is available for each case.
DR: And if you’re in the minority, then the most senior justice in the majority assigns the opinion?
CJR: Right.
DR: When the opinions are being written, do people ever change their minds about how they’re going to vote?
CJR: A number of things can change. One, the rationale might change. You might have thought that this was the basis for the decision, but maybe when you see the writing, you think, “That’s not so good. I think it should be this.” And sometimes people change their votes as well.
Sometimes the votes will be in, and one justice will say, “I’m very tentative about this.” You try to take that into account in making assignments.
DR: Can one justice walk down the corridor to another justice’s chambers and say, “I’d like to talk to you about this case,” and try to lobby them?
CJR: I wouldn’t use the word lobby.
DR: Convince?
CJR: It does not happen as often as you might think. There is kind of a general ethos that we are nine people acting collegially. We would like to have the discussions when everybody is there. We do that orally a couple of times, but the rest of it is in writing.
“Nine people acting collegially”: The Justices of the Supreme Court, group portrait, May 20, 1957. Sitting, left to right: Justices Douglas, Black, Warren, Frankfurter, and Burton. Standing, left to right: Justices Brennan, Clark, Harlan, and Whittaker.
So if you have a particular idea that has not been fleshed out, you would write a memo and send it around to everybody. That isn’t to say that every now and then somebody won’t walk down the hall. But it would be to talk over the merits of a particular issue.
DR: So if one member of the court wants to talk about the merits of a case and he wants to persuade someone, and he says, “I could maybe agree with you on this, but maybe you could agree with me on another case”? Do they ever do that?
CJR: They don’t do it with me. I don’t know what they do among themselves.
DR: All right. How does the Supreme Court avoid leaks? Never have I seen an opinion leaked in advance. What’s the secret to that?
CJR: It is a source of considerable pride that we do run a tight ship. I meet with all the law clerks at the beginning of the term and that is one thing I emphasize to them.
The people in the building are an extraordinary workforce. They are dedicated to the institution, and I don’t think they are going be the source of any leaks.
DR: How do you pick law clerks? Each justice has four clerks?
CJR: Four, right.
DR: What do the clerks do?
CJR: Whatever the justice wants them to do. They write memos. In many chambers they do bench memos: “Here’s an outline of what the case is about.” I inherited the practice from both Judge Friendly and Justice Rehnquist not to have those.
But I might request a memo on a particular jurisdictional issue that came up. I like to use my clerks as sounding boards. All of them will work on each case. One takes the lead on any particular case, but the others will help prepare it. I’ll bounce ideas off of them to get some sense of areas where my thoughts might be weak or need some shoring up.
DR: You pick law school students who, I assume, are at the top of their class?
CJR: I talk to some professors that I know and they’ll say, “This is a good person to look at.” And I talk to judges, because clerks usually work on a lower court before coming up to the Supreme Court. They send me good recommendations.
DR: Have you ever picked one and said, “Oops, I made a mistake” afterward?
CJR: Well, some are better than others.
DR: All right. What is the biggest challenge of the federal judiciary? Is it the compensation level of judges? For example, your clerks, when they leave, their first day at a law firm they get paid more than you get paid.
CJR: Right.
DR: As I understand it, the starting salary in law firms is maybe $200,000 or $250,000, and the bonus for having been a Supreme Court clerk is $250,000.
CJR: They tell me it is up to $300,000.
DR: So they’re making maybe $550,000 their first year, and the chief justice is making a lot less. What is the biggest challenge to getting judges compensation?
CJR: I worked hard for several years to try to get a judicial pay increase, and for a lot of reasons it is a tough sell.
One point that I think is worth noting with regard to judicial pay is that lower salaries make things especially difficult for lawyers who are supporting more than their immediate family. Minority lawyers are more likely to be the first member of their family to have a job as a lawyer. It can be very hard for them to take a dramatic pay cut, and they may be exactly the people you want to be taking the bench. That is worth considering.
DR: How hard was it making decisions when you had only eight justices on the court between the death of Justice Scalia in 2016 and the confirmation of Justice Gorsuch in 2017? Was that particularly difficult?
CJR: It was particularly difficult. We did work hard. I am very proud of the fact that we only had four cases that we were unable to break out of a four-four position—that is, we had only four that were affirmed by an equally divided court. There were two cases that we had reargued, but that is a small number given the situation.
We worked hard to see if we could find grounds on which enough of us could agree so that we could move the case along. Maybe not on the question we intended to decide, maybe not on the most momentous issue, but something where enough people could get on board so that the process could continue.
DR: What’s the greatest pleasure of being chief justice of the United States, other than being able to do interviews like this?
CJR: I get to do the kind of work I enjoy, in service of the country that I love, with eight wonderful people. And I can do it for as long as I want. That’s a pretty good combination.
DR: What do you do for relaxation?
CJR: The way it works is you work full-out for ten months and then July and August are lighter. We are still on call. We still get emergencies. But we are away from each other.
Justice Louis Brandeis said he could do the twelve months’ worth of work in ten months, but he could not do it in twelve months. I think there is a lot of wisdom to that. So I travel. I spend time with my wife and kids a little more than during the year.
DR: Do the justices socialize a lot with each other?
CJR: You know, we work very closely together all day for a long time.
DR: That’s enough.
CJR: If you have interrelated interests, you will. Justice Ginsburg and Justice Scalia used to go to the opera. Maybe the other justices are socializing and I am just not invited. I don’t know.
DR: When you are the chief justice of the United States, can you go shopping in Washington or go to a restaurant without having people bother you or ask for selfies?
CJR: It is actually not that much of a problem. And sometimes as people recognize me, they just say hello. I would say in twelve years there have only been a half dozen cases where it wasn’t pleasant.
I recall that once, a woman came up to me and was just so effusive about how grateful she was for a particular opinion. I just did not have the heart to tell her I was in dissent.
DR: Did your parents live to see you become chief justice?
CJR: Yes.
DR: Wow. Did they say, “We never thought we’d live to see this”? Or did they say, “Well, maybe you could have done a little better”? You’re chief justice of the United States. What do your parents say?
CJR: Well, it was better than when I got a clerkship on the Second Circuit. My grandmother was still alive. She called to congratulate me, and she said, “Don’t feel bad that you didn’t get the First Circuit.”
