Know your BFEE: John Roberts earned his Sgt. Pepper stripes as an Iran-Contra cover-up artiste.

[Octafish]

36. The youngest Chief Justice since John Marshall in 1801.

People today generally live longer than then...

On history's stage: Chief Justice John Roberts Jr.

As the youngest leader of the high court in two centuries, he has the energy, the intellect, and the votes to reshape our world.

By Roger Parloff, senior editor
Fortune/CNN
January 3, 2011: 5:00 AM ET

EXCERPT...

Since 2003, Roberts has been working the other side of the lectern, first as a federal appeals court judge and then, since September 2005, as the 17th Chief Justice of the United States. Just 50 when he assumed that post, Roberts became the youngest Chief Justice since John Marshall was appointed to the job by President John Adams in 1801. With good health, Roberts could surpass Marshall's record as the longest-serving Chief Justice (34 years) in March 2040. Along the way he'll have a fair shot at surpassing in stature every Chief Justice except Marshall (who wrote Marbury v. Madison, the bedrock 1803 opinion establishing that the Supreme Court is empowered to strike down acts of Congress that in its view conflict with the Constitution).

"He's going to go down as an absolutely historic figure," predicts Goldstein, who co-heads the litigation department at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and is also the publisher of SCOTUSblog.com, an authoritative court-watching site. "John Roberts is the leader of a Court with five solidly conservative votes for the first time in its modern history," he continues. "He's an incredibly telegenic, energetic, thoughtful person, a great speaker -- but in addition he has the fifth vote. So while ... the [Chief Justice William] Rehnquist Court was more conservative than the [Chief Justice Warren] Burger Court, which was more conservative than the [Chief Justice Earl] Warren Court, it's the Roberts Court in which the rubber will hit the road."

SNIP...

The Roberts Court is also widely seen as pro-business -- "Supreme Court Inc.," the New York Times Magazine called it in 2008. Since 2006, according to the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, the Roberts Court has ruled for business interests in 68% of the cases in which the U.S. Chamber of Commerce submitted friend-of-the-court briefs. During a comparable span (1981--86) drawn from the Burger Court years, the Chamber's win ratio was just 43%. Close to 80% of the Chamber's wins before the Roberts Court have been by votes of 7-2 or better.

The Court's "corporatist" rap was further cemented last January, at least in popular perception, when it decided Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, finding that the First Amendment's free-speech clause guaranteed corporations (and unions) the same unfettered right to make independent election expenditures as is enjoyed by flesh-and-blood citizens. The holding struck down federal laws going back to the 1940s, and state laws back to the 1890s.

CONTINUED...

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/03/on-historys-stage-chief-justice-john-roberts-jr/

...like corporations.