Utah Law Review Volume 2014 | Number 1 Article 4 2014 The hiP losophy and Jurisprudence of Chief Justice Roberts Kiel Brennan-Marquez Follow this and additional works at: http://dc.law.utah.edu/ulr Part of the Judges Commons, Jurisprudence Commons, and the Supreme Court of the United States Commons Recommended Citation Brennan-Marquez, Kiel (2014) "The hiP losophy and Jurisprudence of Chief Justice Roberts," Utah Law Review: Vol. 2014 : No. 1 , Article 4. Available at: http://dc.law.utah.edu/ulr/vol2014/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Utah Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Utah Law Review by an authorized editor of Utah Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. THE PHILOSOPHY AND JURISPRUDENCE OF CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS Kiel Brennan-Marquez* Abstract A thicket of commentary has blossomed around the figure of Chief Justice Roberts. The bulk of it, however, has either focused exclusively on his role in the 2011 term or has lumped him in uncritically with the Court’s conservative wing. In response, this Article takes a wider view of his tenure, arguing that Chief Justice Roberts is best understood as an idealist, a true believer in the rule of law, with a special sensitivity toward issues of constitutional structure. In the first Part of the Article, I explore Chief Justice Roberts’s penchant for infusing his opinions with “teaching moments”—a tendency certainly on display in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius1 (NFIB), but discernable in many other opinions as well.