Like Biskupic’s previous books about Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia and Sonia Sotomayor, The Chief offers an extraordinarily insightful, thoughtful and accessible analysis of Roberts’s personal life, professional career, judicial experience and approach to constitutional interpretation. It is essential reading for anyone who truly wants to understand this pivotal moment in Supreme Court history ... Biskupic, who has known Roberts for more than 20 years, sat down with him for seven interviews totaling 20 hours for her book. She was therefore well-positioned to offer often stunning insight into Roberts’s life and thinking both on and off the court.
... assiduously reported and briskly written ... While Biskupic sheds light on when and how Roberts made [his decision on the Affordable Care Act in 2012], she is less illuminating on why ... The difficulty of understanding that historic vote is emblematic of something larger: just how hard it is to figure out who Roberts really is ... Biskupic all but throws up her hands toward the end of her narrative, calling Roberts an 'enigma,' but she suggests that he is pulled by two often-conflicting instincts. One is ideological: a desire to move the court rightward on race, religion and other issues. The other is institutional: an interest in the court being respected and seen as nonpolitical.
The first biography of Roberts has arrived...It will not be the last. A well-reported book, it sheds new light but is premature by decades ... Biskupic reports in detail for the first time on the machinations of the Obamacare case...Future scholars will endlessly probe this fascinating moment in judicial history, but Biskupic deserves credit for writing the first draft.
A balanced portrait of this most influential of judges. What surprises is the unprecedented glimpse at the interpersonal, and often contentious, relationships that reverberate throughout the court.
Ms. Biskupic, a legal analyst at CNN, is a skillful writer and a diligent scholar, and the John Roberts she presents here is a sympathetic and complex character ... But this biography advances a single argument throughout: that Chief Justice Roberts is torn between his conservative ideology and his concern for the high court’s legitimacy ... My guess is that liberals will find the book vaguely hopeful (might the chief justice begin 'swinging' to the left more often?) and conservatives will find themselves, as I did, scrawling question marks in the margins ... The remarkable thing about Ms. Biskupic’s analysis is that she all but overtly praises him for issuing a convoluted decision because the outcome is one she favors.
... insightful ... The author skillfully traces Roberts’s rise from childhood almost as if he were a man of destiny, yet with human insecurities with which we can all identify ... Although one might think a conservative future will naturally follow from a conservative past, a truism previously betrayed by the likes of Chief Justice Earl Warren, the legacy of the Roberts Court in the Trump era is still a blank slate.
Biskupic, a friend and colleague for 30 years, is both charmed and awed by Roberts...She exploits her extraordinary access and three decades of Supreme Court reportage and analysis to provide intimate insight into her subject's persona and illuminating (if thinly sourced) scuttlebutt about Roberts' less-than-perfect relations with his colleagues ... In her subtitle, Biskupic promises an account of Roberts' 'life and turbulent times,' but the account makes clear that Roberts has been untouched and largely unaffected by the turbulences of his formative years.
As the author demonstrates in her incisive analysis, the 5-4 'conservative-liberal fault line' has prevailed—e.g., in the upholding of Donald Trump’s Muslim ban ... A thorough, albeit somewhat premature, biographical portrait.
Biskupic goes light on Roberts’s personal life and mundane day-to-day details, focusing instead on his work in the George H.W. Bush Justice Department, his time on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, his 2005 appointment and confirmation to the Supreme Court, and his role in the back-and-forth of the justices’ decision making ... At times Biskupic is openly critical of Roberts; she raises doubts about his claim that the Court’s recent decisions on voting rights, religion, and campaign finance were neutral decision making rather than the work of a political institution. In these pages, Roberts comes across as a dyed-in-the-wool conservative whose views have remained remarkably unchanging over time. Biskupic’s analysis will be closely read by Court watchers on both the Right and Left.
