Topic: Chief Justice Earl Warren
Senator: Kennedy
Date: SEPTEMBER 15, 2005
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KENNEDY: At the outset of my questions, I talked about Earl Warren. And you were enormously complimentary about Earl Warren, about him understanding not only the law, but also understanding the importance of a chief justice, bringing other justices together in a very important way in terms of dealing with a societal issue and a question. And I think we're a fairer country and a fairer land because of this.
KENNEDY: This was really the bringing together of the mind and the heart. Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "It's dangerous to think about legal issues can be worked out like mathematics."
And another nominee who was here not too long ago had this to say about the head and the heart: "What you worry about is someone trying to decide an individual case without thinking out the effect of that decision on a lot of cases. That is why I always think law requires both a heart and a head.
"If you do not have a heart, it becomes a sterile set of rules removed from human problems and it will not help. if you do not have a head, there is the risk that in trying to decide a particular person's problem in a case, that may look fine for that person, but you cause trouble for a lot of other people, making their lives yet worse."
In the remaining moment, recalling Justice Warren, just thinking through what other nominees have said about the importance of a heart and a legal mind and you as a chief justice together, in telling the American people how you were inspired by Chief Justice Warren at a very important and critical time in our nation's history, what could you tell them now that could give them the assurance that you might be a similar kind of chief justice should you be approved by the Senate?
ROBERTS: Well, Senator, my point with respect to Chief Justice Warren was that he appreciated the impact that the decision in Brown would have.
ROBERTS: And he appreciated that the impact would be far more beneficial and favorable and far more effectively implemented with the unanimous court, the court speaking with one voice, than a splintered court.
The issue was significant enough that he spent the extra time in the reargument of the case to devote his energies to convincing the other justices -- and, obviously, there's no arm-twisting or anything of that; it's the type of collegial discussion that judges and justices have to engage in -- of the importance of what the court was doing and an appreciation of its impact on real people and real lives.
I recognize as a judge and I recognized as a lawyer that these cases have impact on real people and real lives.
I always insisted when I was a lawyer about getting out into the field and seeing. If I was arguing a case involving native villages in Alaska, I went to the villages. If I was arguing a case about an assembly line, I went to the assembly line. You had to see where the case was going to have its impact and what it's impression was going to be on people.
Now, none of those cases were as important as Brown v. Board of Education but the basic principle is the same: I think judge's do have to appreciate that they're dealing with real people with real cases.
We, obviously, deal with documents and texts, the Constitution, the statutes, the legislative history, and that's where the legal decisions are made. But judges never lose sight or should never lose sight of the fact that their decisions affect real people with real lives, and I appreciate that.
KENNEDY: My time is up, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
ROBERTS: Thank you, Senator.
SPECTER: Thank you, Senator Kennedy.
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