Roberts, Owen Josephus (b. Germantown, Pa., 2 May 1875; d. West Vincent Township, Chester County, Pa., 17 May 1955; interred St. Andrews Cemetery, West Vincent Township); associate justice, 1930–1945. Educated at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his law degree in 1898, Owen Roberts worked first as a private attorney and then as assistant district attorney in Philadelphia. He taught law part time at the University of Pennsylvania until 1919. In 1924 President Calvin Coolidge named Roberts a special U.S. attorney in the Teapot Dome Scandals. When Herbert Hoover's initial choice for a 1930 Supreme Court vacancy, John J.
Parker of North Carolina, failed to get Senate confirmation (see
Nominees, Rejection of), Hoover nominated Roberts, who took the seat in June.
Roberts joined a conservative Depression‐era Court identified with entrepreneurial liberty and skeptical of government regulation of business. On a Court deeply divided by new appointments (Charles Evans
Hughes and Benjamin
Cardozo), Roberts's vote was pivotal in the struggle between Franklin
Roosevelt and the Court.
Roberts's opinions reviewed the constitutional challenges of the
New Deal in a way that puzzled Court critics, who could find no consistent jurisprudential principle in his rulings. In
Nebbia v. New York (1934), Roberts upheld state regulation of business—in this case a New York statute regulating milk prices (see
State Regulation of Commerce). As conservative opposition to New Deal legislation intensified, the Court's attitude toward federal economic regulation hardened. Roberts joined the majority in
Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan (1935) to invalidate section 9c of the National Industrial Recovery Act; his opinion in
Retirement Board v. Alton Railroad Co. (1935) struck down the Railroad Retirement Pension Act; a unanimous Court held the entire National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional in
Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935);
Louisville Bank v. Radford (1935) voided the Federal Farm Bankruptcy Act of 1934. One of Roberts's most far‐reaching opinions came in a 6‐to‐3 ruling that overturned the first Agricultural Adjustment Act (
U.
S. v.
Butler, 1936). In
Carter v. Carter Coal Co. (1936), Roberts joined the majority that invalidated the Bituminous Coal Act of 1935 as a federal intrusion upon matters reserved to the states.
The Court's persistent opposition to
New Deal legislation led to the 1937 battle over Roosevelt's
court‐packing plan. Partly as a response to the criticism directed at the Court, Roberts softened his attitude toward the New Deal. In 1937 Roberts joined the majority in
West Coast Hotel v. Parrish in upholding a state minimum wage law (a conclusion Roberts reached before the Court reorganization was announced). The Court also sustained the Farm Mortgage Act of 1935, the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, and the Social Security Act of 1935. In each case Roberts voted with the majority to sustain New Deal legislation.
As the Court in the 1930s increasingly turned its attention to civil liberties, Roberts again walked an unpredictable path. He wrote the Court's unanimous opinions that upheld the constitutionality of the
white primary (
Grovey v. Townsend, 1935) and dissented in 1944 when that holding was overturned 8 to 1 in
Smith v. Allwright. Roberts's 1940 opinion in
Cantwell v. Connecticut reversed a Jehovah's Witness's conviction for soliciting contributions without a permit. He also voted with the majority to uphold a flag‐salute requirement in
Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940). Three years later, the Court reversed itself in
West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, but Roberts adhered to
Gobitis. In
Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938), the Court invalidated exclusion of African‐American students from the state's law school as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment, and Roberts voted with the majority. Finally, in
Korematsu v. United States (1944), Roberts dissented powerfully in the constitutional test of the forced relocation of Japanese‐Americans during World War II. He insisted that the West Coast exclusion orders were a “case of convicting a citizen as punishment for not submitting to imprisonment in a concentration camp, … solely because of his ancestry” (p. 226).
While a sitting justice, Roberts chaired an inquiry into the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (see
Extrajudicial Activities). The committee exonerated the Roosevelt administration and placed responsibility on the military commanders at Pearl Harbor. After his retirement from the Court in 1945, Roberts served as dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School (1948–1951) and chaired the Security Board of the Atomic Energy Commission. He died of a heart attack in 1955, shortly after his eightieth birthday.
Bibliography
G. Edward White , The American Judicial Tradition: Profiles of Leading American Judges (1976).
Elder Witt , Congressional Quarterly's Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court, 2d ed. (1990).
Augustus M. Burns III
