The Chief Justice of the United States is the chief judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. As such, he is head of the United States federal court system, which functions as the judicial branch of the nation's federal government. The Chief Justice is one of nine Supreme Court justices; the other eight have the title Associate Justice.
The Chief Justice, as the highest judicial officer in the country, serves as a spokesperson for the federal government's judicial branch, and acts as a chief administrative officer for the federal courts. He is also head of the Judicial Conference of the United States, and in that capacity appoints the director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. By law, he is also a member of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, and by custom is elected chancellor of the board.
The Chief Justice leads the business of the Supreme Court and presides over oral arguments. When the court renders an opinion, the Chief Justiceâ€"when in the majorityâ€"decides who writes the court's opinion. The Chief Justice also has significant agenda-setting power over the court's meetings. In the case of an impeachment of a President of the United States, which has occurred twice, the Chief Justice presides over the trial in the U.S. Senate. Additionally, the presidential oath of office is typically administered by the Chief Justice (although the Constitution does not assign this duty to anyone in particular).
Since the Supreme Court was established in 1789, 17 persons have served as chief justice. The first was John Jay (1789â€"1795). The current chief justice is John Roberts (since 2005). Fourâ€"Edward Douglass White, Charles Evans Hughes, Harlan Fiske Stone, and William Rehnquistâ€"were previously confirmed for associate justice and subsequently confirmed for chief justice separately.
Origin, title, and appointment to office
The United States Constitution does not explicitly establish an office of Chief Justice, but presupposes its existence with a single reference in Article I, Section 3, Clause 6: "When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside." Nothing more is said in the Constitution regarding the office. Article III, Section 1, which authorizes the establishment of the Supreme Court, refers to all members of the Court simply as "judges." The Judiciary Act of 1789 created the distinctive titles of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
In 1866, at the urging of Salmon P. Chase, Congress restyled the chief justice's title to the current Chief Justice of the United States. The first person whose Supreme Court commission contained the modified title was Melville Fuller in 1888. The associate justices' title was not altered in 1866, and remains as originally created.
The chief justice, like all federal judges, is nominated by the President and confirmed to office by the U.S. Senate. Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution specifies that they "shall hold their Offices during good Behavior". This language means that the appointments are effectively for life, and that, once in office, a justice's tenure ends only when they die, retire, resign, or are removed from office through the impeachment process.
The salary of the chief justice is set by Congress; the current (2017) annual salary is $263,300, which is slightly higher than that of associate justices, which is $251,800. The practice of appointing an individual to serve as chief justice is grounded in tradition; while the Constitution mandates that there be a chief justice, it is silent on the subject of how one is chosen and by whom. There is no specific constitutional prohibition against using another method to select the chief justice from among those justices properly appointed and confirmed to the Supreme Court. Constitutional law scholar Todd Pettys has proposed that presidential appointment of chief justices should be done away with, and replaced by a process that permits the Justices to select their own chief justice.
Three incumbent associate justices have been nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate as chief justice: Edward Douglass White in 1910, Harlan Fiske Stone in 1941, and William Rehnquist in 1986. A fourth, Abe Fortas, was nominated to the position in 1968, but not confirmed. As an associate justice does not have to resign his or her seat on the Court in order to be nominated as chief justice, Fortas remained an associate justice. Similarly, when associate justice William Cushing was nominated and confirmed as chief justice in January 1796, but declined the office, he too remained on the Court. Additionally, two former associate justices subsequently returned to service on the Court as chief justice. John Rutledge was the first. President Washington gave him a recess appointment in 1795. However, his subsequent nomination to the office was not confirmed by the Senate, and he left office and the Court. In 1933, former associate justice Charles Evans Hughes was confirmed as chief justice.
Duties
Along with his general responsibilities as a member of the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice has several unique duties to fulfill.
Impeachment trials
Article I, section 3 of the U.S. Constitution stipulates that the Chief Justice shall preside over impeachment trials of the President of the United States in the U.S. Senate. Two Chief Justices, Salmon P. Chase and William Rehnquist, have presided over the trial in the Senate that follows an impeachment of the president â€" Chase in 1868 over the proceedings against President Andrew Johnson and Rehnquist in 1999 over the proceedings against President Bill Clinton. Both presidents were subsequently acquitted.
Seniority
Many of the procedures and inner workings of the Court turn on the seniority of the justices. Traditionally, the chief justice has been regarded as primus inter pares (first among equals)â€"that is, the chief justice is the highest-ranking and foremost member of the Court, regardless of that officeholder's length of service when compared against that of any associate justice. This seniority and added prestige enables a chief justice to define the Court's culture and norms, and thus influence how it functions. The chief justice sets the agenda for the weekly meetings where the justices review the petitions for certiorari, to decide whether to hear or deny each case. The Supreme Court agrees to hear less than one percent of the cases petitioned to it. While associate justices may append items to the weekly agenda, in practice this initial agenda-setting power of the chief justice has significant influence over the direction of the court. Nonetheless, a chief justice's influence may be limited by circumstances and the associate justices' understanding of legal principles; it is definitely limited by the fact that he has only a single vote of nine on the decision whether to grant or deny certiorari.
Despite the chief justice's elevated stature, his vote carries the same legal weight as the vote of each associate justice. Additionally, he has no legal authority to overrule the verdicts or interpretations of the other eight judges or tamper with them. The task of assigning who shall write the opinion for the majority falls to the most senior justice in the majority. Thus, when the chief justice is in the majority, he always assigns the opinion. Early in his tenure, Chief Justice John Marshall insisted upon holdings which the justices could unanimously back as a means to establish and build the Court's national prestige. In doing so, Marshall would often write the opinions himself, and actively discouraged dissenting opinions. Associate Justice William Johnson eventually persuaded Marshall and the rest of the Court to adopt its present practice: one justice writes an opinion for the majority, and the rest are free to write their own separate opinions or not, whether concurring or dissenting.
The chief justice's formal prerogativeâ€"when in the majorityâ€"to assign which justice will write the Court's opinion is perhaps his most influential power, as this enables him to influence the historical record. He "may assign this task to the individual justice best able to hold together a fragile coalition, to an ideologically amenable colleague, or to himself." Opinion authors can have a big influence on the content of an opinion; two justices in the same majority, given the opportunity, might write very different majority opinions. A chief justice who knows well the associate justices can therefore do muchâ€"by the simple act of selecting the justice who writes the opinion of the courtâ€"to affect the general character or tone of an opinion, which in turn can affect the interpretation of that opinion in cases before lower courts in the years to come.
Additionally, the chief justice chairs the conferences where cases are discussed and tentatively voted on by the justices. He normally speaks first and so has influence in framing the discussion. Although the chief justice votes firstâ€"the Court votes in order of seniorityâ€"he may strategically pass in order to ensure membership in the majority if desired. It is reported that:
Chief Justice Warren Burger was renowned, and even vilified in some quarters, for voting strategically during conference discussions on the Supreme Court in order to control the Court’s agenda through opinion assignment. Indeed, Burger is said to have often changed votes to join the majority coalition, cast "phony votes" by voting against his preferred position, and, declined to express a position at conference.
Oath of office
The Chief Justice typically administers the oath of office at the inauguration of the President of the United States. This is a tradition, rather than a constitutional responsibility of the Chief Justice; the Constitution does not require that the oath be administered by anyone in particular, simply that it be taken by the president. Law empowers any federal and state judge, as well as notaries public (such as John Calvin Coolidge, Sr., to administer oaths and affirmations.
If the Chief Justice is ill or incapacitated, the oath is usually administered by the next senior member of the Supreme Court. Seven times, someone other than the Chief Justice of the United States administered the oath of office to the President. Robert Livingston, as Chancellor of the State of New York (the state's highest ranking judicial office), administered the oath of office to George Washington at his first inauguration; there was no Chief Justice of the United States, nor any other federal judge prior to their appointments by President Washington in the months following his inauguration. William Cushing, an associate justice of the Supreme Court, administered Washington's second oath of office in 1793. Calvin Coolidge's father, a notary public, administered the oath to his son after the death of Warren Harding. This, however, was contested upon Coolidge's return to Washington and his oath was re-administered by Judge Adolph A. Hoehling, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. John Tyler and Millard Fillmore were both sworn in on the death of their predecessors by Chief Justice William Cranch of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia. Chester A. Arthur and Theodore Roosevelt's initial oaths reflected the unexpected nature of their taking office. On November 22, 1963, after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Judge Sarah T. Hughes, a federal district court judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, administered the oath of office to then Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson aboard the presidential airplane.
In addition, the Chief Justice ordinarily administers the oath of office to newly appointed and confirmed associate justices, whereas the senior associate justice will normally swear in a new Chief Justice or vice president.
Other duties
Since the tenure of William Howard Taft, the office of the Chief Justice has moved beyond just first among equals. The Chief Justice also:
- Serves as the head of the federal judiciary.
- Serves as the head of the Judicial Conference of the United States, the chief administrative body of the United States federal courts. The Judicial Conference is empowered by the Rules Enabling Act to propose rules, which are then promulgated by the Supreme Court (subject to disapproval by Congress), to ensure the smooth operation of the federal courts. Major portions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Federal Rules of Evidence have been adopted by most state legislatures and are considered canonical by American law schools.
- Appoints sitting federal judges to the membership of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), a "secret court" which oversees requests for surveillance warrants by federal police agencies (primarily the F.B.I.) against suspected foreign intelligence agents inside the United States. (see 50 U.S.C. § 1803).
- Appoints the members of the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, a special tribunal of seven sitting federal judges responsible for selecting the venue for coordinated pretrial proceedings in situations where multiple related federal actions have been filed in different judicial districts.
- Serves ex officio as a member of the Board of Regents, and by custom as the Chancellor, of the Smithsonian Institution.
- Supervises the acquisition of books for the Law Library of the Library of Congress.
Unlike Senators and Representatives who are constitutionally prohibited from holding any other "office of trust or profit" of the United States or of any state while holding their congressional seats, the Chief Justice and the other members of the federal judiciary are not barred from serving in other positions. Chief Justice John Jay served as a diplomat to negotiate the so-called Jay Treaty (also known as the Treaty of London of 1794), Justice Robert H. Jackson was appointed by President Truman to be the U.S. Prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials of leading Nazis, and Chief Justice Earl Warren chaired The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy. As described above, the Chief Justice holds office in the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress.
Disability or vacancy
Under 28 USC, when the Chief Justice is unable to discharge his functions, or that office is vacant, his duties are carried out by the most senior associate justice who is able to act, until the disability or vacancy ends, as chief justice. As of February 13, 2016, Anthony Kennedy is the most senior associate justice.
List of Chief Justices
Since the Supreme Court was established in 1789, the following 17 persons have served as Chief Justice:
Notes
See also
- Lists of United States Supreme Court cases
References
Further reading
External links
- Media related to Chief Justice of the United States at Wikimedia Commons
