Roberts, Owen Josephus

(1875-1955)

   Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts was educated at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he graduated in 1898. He practiced law in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and for 22 years taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. In 1918, Roberts became a special deputy U.S. attorney. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge appointed him, together with Atlee Pomerene, to prosecute those involved in the Teapot Dome scandal.

   In 1930, President Herbert Hoover nominated Roberts to fill the empty seat on the Supreme Court following the death of Edward Sanford. With the new chief justice Charles Evans Hughes, Roberts held the balance between the conservatives and liberals in the court. The court became increasingly liberal on issues of freedom of speech and, in the case of the Scottsboro Boys, on the right of defendants to have counsel appointed for their defense. However, Roberts tended to side with the conservatives in cases concerning the extension of government authority under the New Deal. But following Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attempt to alter the composition of the court, Roberts made “a switch in time that saved nine” and sided with the liberal group to uphold minimum wage laws, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Social Security Act. Roberts tended to be more conservative on civil rights and civil liberties and supported white primaries in 1935, compulsory flag salutes, and the pledge of allegiance in public schools in 1940. However, he dissented against the decision to uphold the evacuation of Japanese Americans during World War II.

   Following his retirement in 1945, Roberts was dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School from 1948 to 1951. He was also chair of the security board of the Atomic Energy Commission. His Holmes lectures at Harvard Law School in 1951 were published as The Court and the Constitution (1951).