Chief Justice Roberts helps celebrate federal court quasquicentennial

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U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts‘ visit to Buffalo Wednesday was a homecoming of sorts.

Before participating in a “fireside chat” in front of about 600 members of the western New York legal community, Roberts visited his boyhood home in the Buffalo suburb of Hamburg, where he spent the first 10 years of his life before his family moved to Indiana.

“What do you remember about growing up in Buffalo,” U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence J. Vilardo asked Roberts at the start of the hour-long interview.

“It was cold,” Roberts answered without hesitation.

Roberts was in town to help celebrate the 125^th anniversary of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, which was established on May 12, 1900.

Vilardo complimented Roberts’ legal writing and asked how he became such a good writer.

“I think the way to learn to write is to read good writing, and I read a lot,” Robert said.

He enjoyed reading books by Joseph Conrad and Elmore Leonard — “Joseph Conrad if you want to write long and flowing elegant sentences, and Elmore Leonard if you like punchy sentences.”

And Roberts had his three sisters read his legal briefs and provide feedback.

Roberts said he figured his writing should be “clear enough for somebody who is an intelligent layperson to get through it and to understand basically what’s going on.”

And he read aloud what he had written.

“No matter how complicated it was, you should be able to stand up and read it to somebody and have them basically follow,” he said.

“Otherwise, your sentences are too convoluted, not direct enough,” he said.

Vilardo said: “I think most judges would agree that judicial independence is crucial.”

He asked: “Do you agree? What do you think?”

“The only real political science innovation in our Constitution … is the establishment of an independent judiciary,” Roberts answered.

“In our Constitution … the judiciary is a coequal branch of government separate from the others with the authority to interpret the Constitution as law and strike down, obviously, acts of Congress, or acts of the president. That innovation doesn’t work if the judiciary is not independent,” he said.

“Its job is to, obviously, decide cases, but, in the course of that, check the excesses of Congress, or the executive, and that does require a degree of independence,” Roberts said.

The audience applauded.

“What do you think of these calls for impeachment of judges based on the decisions that they’ve made,” Vilardo asked.

“I’ve already spoken to that, and impeachment is not how you register disagreement with decisions … That’s what were there for,” Roberts answered.

Vilardo asked how the Supreme Court justices decide on what cases to hear.

“What we’re looking for are conflicting decisions on the same law that have to be fixed … It should mean the same thing across the country, so that’s more the type of case we would take to resolve that disagreement,” Roberts said.

“People who want to have their cases heard need to have somebody who’s good at explaining why we need a greater degree of uniformity,” he said.

And Roberts’ offered district court judges advice on writing decisions: “Brevity is good.”

“We recognize the primary responsibility of the district court is to deal with the facts and we don’t want to be second guessing the facts. So that’s an important thing to address if it’s going to be in the opinion to make it clear what findings you’ve made about what,” Roberts said.

Roberts also addressed what he called the misconception that his court is overturning precedent more often than in the past.

“We take fewer cases now than they did before, but the number of important ones that would be subject to overruling are the same,” he said.

“A lot of people talk as if we’re overruling a lot more. It’s the lowest it’s been since the 50s,” Roberts said.

And the idea that it’s invariably a bad thing to overrule precedent is “quite mistaken,” Roberts said.

“You can’t do it willy nilly … Stare decisis is an important part of our work. The law is supposed to be predictable, so you need a special justification before you want to overrule a case,” he said.

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