The Most Important Opinion Of John Roberts
January 27th, 2020 by admin
THE MOST IMPORTANT OPINION OF JOHN ROBERTS
Chief Justice John Roberts has written many legal opinions for our nation's most influential court of law. But his most important opinion may be about his insights concerning what really matters in the court of life.
Chief Justice Roberts was asked to give the commencement address at his son's elite middle school a few years ago. But his remarks were those of a father whose career was made better and fuller because of his insights about life's experiences.
Here is some of what he told these students.
1. It is not a bad thing to be treated unfairly. It is hard in life to develop any humility and respect for others if you look down on anybody. If you are ever judged harshly for an arbitrary
reason, you will do better when you are judging others.
2. Betrayal. If you experience the full of life, you may be betrayed at some time in some way, small or large. But it will help you to learn the importance of loyalty and standing your
ground when others walk away.
3. Loneliness. We are all lonely, just at different times, and about different things. Make friends and check in with them when you sense they need to hear from a friend.
4. Bad luck is inevitable in life. It helps to teach you that some of life is random.
5. Failure. You may fail at something, which will help you understand success in another important lane in your life. And how you came to find it.
6. The value of being, at times, the butt of ridicule.
7. Appreciate the value of being ignored for an arbitrary reason at some point in your life.
8. Don't act privileged. Chief Justice Roberts had some other insights as well. The thread running through nearly all of them is humility.
The students graduating to high school that commencement day were young men of extraordinary privilege. Every one of them would likely achieve significant financial and professional
success. The opinion rendered that day by John Roberts, however, was less about making a living than about making a life, to hitch a ride on Winston Churchill's insightful phrase.
Because when they became the deciders, in time, they would be better equipped to see people and circumstances through both living/life lenses more clearly.
These days we seem to be falling into a pattern of meanness, and reason and a fundamental respect for others are often its casualties. Strong opinions are used more like a club at times than as a pathway to a more reasoned view of things. And they often value little, or not at all/ this humble notion that despite your intellect and strength of your own opinion, there is a chance you may be wrong.
What's the answer?
Part of it may rest in an observation a good friend of mine told me years ago. My friend, who played college football, was a referee for the ACC for many years, and an NFL official for ashort period of time. So he knew his subject.
I asked him one time if referees get reprimanded if they make a bad call, after the supervisors have reviewed the tapes of the previous game. He said they are not generally reprimanded for making a mistake. They are reprimanded if they are not where their training says they should be and they are not able to see the play clearly. That's the key question. Were you where you needed to be to see the play clearly? If you are, you are less likely to make a bad call.
I have always thought this story offers a helpful metaphor when I try to grade my own conduct, and emotional response, to events. Volatile emotions, fatigue, pride, envy, jealousy, and a host of other so-called deadly sins, keep folks like you and me, despite our level of education and intelligence, from seeing things clearly. So does a level of arrogance about the strength of our own opinions on hot-button issues, and dismissiveness of those with a contrary view.
This is why this trait of humility, which is such a leveler of these proverbial logs in our eye, is so important. The winning bet is almost always on a smart, thoughtful and experienced person who has the confidence in themselves to know at times they just might be wrong about an issue. Or, that there is a little wrong or right on both sides. They unintentionally may not see a matter clearly, but they are open to that suggestion. The most thoughtful ones among us carry this humility, a sort of double vision, really, to seek out that best place to see the play clearly.
A case in point. When I graduated from law school years ago, I was privileged to serve as a law clerk to a justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court. It was a humbling experience, because as a law clerk I
saw on the front end of my career the writings and oral arguments of the best legal minds in North Carolina, and often in the nation.
My justice was a utilities law expert, and he got all the utilities rate cases which came before the court. One case involved a rate increase application of a well-known utility. The challenge was the utility had a recent history of poor service. Could the utility's (constitutionally protected) fair rate of return be modified if the utility was consistently not rendering fair value
to its customers?
None of our state's best lawyers had addressed the issue in over five hundred pages of briefs. My justice wanted to know if any other jurisdiction had ever ruled that the rate could be
lowered some because of the failure of the utility to render good service over a rather long period of time to its customers.
Two days before my justice was to submit his draft opinion to the other justices I found/stumbled upon two cases on point, both of which held that a utility's rate of return could be lowered somewhat because of its failure to deliver satisfactory service over a long period of time. The most persuasive opinion was written by a well-known judge in another jurisdiction, but a judge who had a judicial philosophy quite different from my
justice.
Here is the great learning experience of my time as a law clerk to the Supreme Court of North Carolina: my justice said that the opinion of this other Judge was well-reasoned and correct in its decision. My Judge said he did not care much for this Judge's overall Judicial philosophy, but the other judge answered this thorny legal question thoughtfully, and correctly, in this opinion.
This opinion was cited by my justice as persuasive on the issue in his draft opinion, and it was adopted by the full court. It remains established law in North Carolina.
The practical lesson to me about this experience is one I have tried to carry (imperfectly at best) to this day: Someone with whom you have a fundamental difference on certain values and philosophies (including political opinions) may have the right sight line on an individual issue, after all. And to gain that right sight line to see the matter clearly, we would do well to carry with us that core value of humility Chief Justice Roberts urged those young men on that long-ago commencement day to remember throughout their lives.
What I have learned about life on the way to the courthouse is this: Humility is such a different-in-kind value. It is this sense of humility which runs through the core of many of these insights by John Roberts. And of my judge, too. For all their intellect, they sought to find that place where they could more clearly see the play, even if it was different than their initial view of the matter.
If two brilliant Judges, with well -known judicial philosophies/ can see things through the lense of humility, and acknowledge from time to time that maybe their general opinion of things may not carry the day on a particular issue, don't you think you and I should, too?>
Posted in: On the Way to the Courthouse