John Roberts Quotes

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John Roberts

Profession : Judge

Birth : January 27, 1955

The Affordable Care Act's requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax.

John Roberts

I go to the opera. It's mostly my wife that's a bigger fan, I'd say, than I am. I like the big opera. I want a lot of people on stage, elephants and marching stuff, and the modern stuff I don't care for.

John Roberts

It's sobering to think of the seventeen chief justices; certainly a solid majority of them have to be characterized as failures. The successful ones are hard to number.

John Roberts

A chief justice's authority is really quite limited, and the dynamic among all the justices is going to affect whether he can accomplish much or not. There is this convention of referring to the Taney Court, the Marshall Court, the Fuller Court, but a chief justice has the same vote that everyone else has.

John Roberts

People, for reasons of their own, often fail to do things that would be good for them or good for society. Those failures - joined with the similar failures of others - can readily have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.

John Roberts

When I worked in the Department of Justice, in the office of the solicitor general, it was my job to argue cases for the United States before the Supreme court. I always found it very moving to stand before the justices and say, 'I speak for my country.'

John Roberts