John G. Roberts Biography

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts made headlines after he suffered a seizure at his vacation home in Maine on July 30, 2007. 

Doctors who examined Roberts called the episode a “benign idiopathic seizure,” finding no tumor, stroke or any other explanation.

Roberts had a similar, unexplained attack in 1993.

The seizure caused the chief justice to fall on a dock, where he sustained minor scrapes.  He was hospitalized overnight for observation.

Born John Glover Roberts Jr. on January 27, 1955 in Buffalo, New York. After receiving his B.A. from Harvard College in 1976 and graduating magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1979, Roberts worked as a law clerk for Judge Henry J. Friendly of the U.S. Court of Appeals and for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who was then an associate justice.

During the Reagan administration, Roberts served as aide to Attorney General William French Smith and as an aide to White House counsel Fred Fielding from 1982 to 1986. During the first Bush administration, from 1989 to 1993, he was the principal deputy solicitor general. For 14 years, he practiced civil litigation with an emphasis on appellate matters in Washington D.C. at the firm Hogan & Hartson before President George W.

Bush appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2003.

A Republican Party loyalist, Roberts has argued in favor of a government regulation that banned abortion-related counseling by federally funded family-planning programs. His 1990 brief further noted that that "we continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled." Roberts also co-authored a brief that argued in favor of clergy-led prayer at public school graduations.

On July 19, 2005, following the retirement of Associate Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, President Bush nominated Roberts to fill her vacancy. In September, Bush withdrew Roberts' nomination for an Associate Justice position and instead nominated him to be the 17th Chief Justice following the September 3 death of William H. Rehnquist.