Chief justice of the United States Supreme Court since approximately 2005. In his end-of-year report for 2024 he noted a growing trend of threats to federal judges. Born around 1955, he is mild-mannered, consensus-seeking and endowed with impeccable establishment credentials. Twenty-two years before he became chief justice, Roberts was a junior lawyer in Ronald Reagan's White House, where he quipped that "the constitution is safe for the summer" during the Supreme Court's annual adjournment. The joke no longer holds: the summer recess is now thick with emergency petitions spurring on-the-fly judgments about core principles of American government. His judicial role model is Chief Justice John Marshall, who established the court's supremacy in interpreting the constitution against Presidents Jefferson and Jackson without provoking either into outright defiance. Roberts has said he wants the court to transcend partisanship and speak with one voice; in 2006 he told Jeffrey Rosen, the legal scholar who runs the National Constitution Centre, that if the court failed to do so "it's going to lose its credibility and legitimacy."
Roberts wrote the majority opinion in Trump v Hawaii, finding that the Immigration and Nationality Act gives the president exceptional discretion to bar specific nationalities from the country if he argues their presence is "detrimental to the interests of the United States"—a ruling that legal scholars cite as evidence of "immigration exceptionalism", the court's profound deference to the president on immigration policy. He also wrote the majority opinion in Trump v United States, which supplied broad immunity to a president from prosecution and articulated a sweeping new definition of presidential power over the executive branch, consistent with the "unitary executive" theory conservatives had long sought to write into law since the Reagan era. The Trump administration has cited the decision as the legal basis for many of its actions.
During Trump's second term, the burden of checking presidential power has fallen largely to Roberts and his colleagues, with Congress unable or unwilling to act. In the early hours of April 19th 2025 the court issued a terse 7-2 order blocking the administration from deporting certain detainees under the Alien Enemies Act, pre-empting an appeals court without even giving the administration a chance to argue. Justice Samuel Alito dissented. The court has also scheduled oral arguments on the administration's attempt to end birthright citizenship.
In Louisiana v Callais, argued on October 15th 2025, Roberts and his five fellow conservative justices gave every indication they may bar race as a consideration when drawing electoral-district maps, potentially gutting section two of the Voting Rights Act. A decision is expected by summer 2026. If section two is undermined, estimates suggest Republicans could eliminate between six and 19 Democrat-held districts in the House.
Roberts is caught between a desire to prevent the court from being seen as just another partisan institution and an instinct to avoid a direct confrontation with the administration that the court could lose. So far the wish to placate the president appears to be winning. In the 2025-26 term, three defining cases—Trump v Slaughter (on firing heads of independent agencies), birthright citizenship, and tariff challenges brought by importers of wine and toys—are expected to expand presidential power further, with the likely exception of the birthright case.
Roberts wrote the majority opinion in the 6-3 decision striking down Trump's Liberation Day tariffs under IEEPA, ruling that "IEEPA does not authorise the President to impose tariffs." He noted that the framers of the constitution "did not vest any part of the taxing power in the Executive Branch" and that "when Congress has delegated its tariff powers, it has done so in explicit terms, and subject to strict limits."
What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens.