U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts in Boise, praises western law schools

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts helped the University of Idaho law school mark its centennial Thursday in Boise, saluting the U of I for addressing western issues and sustaining a tradition of the states as laboratories of experimentation.

Roberts mentioned the College of Law’s joint degree program in water resources management and the U of I’s Idaho Water Center in Boise. He singled out western law schools as institutions that combine pioneer spirit with the rule of law.

The chief justice was in Boise only for a few hours. He was to fly to Thursday night to Moscow, where he will deliver the annual Bellwood lecture on Friday afternoon.

Roberts drew a crowd of 750 to the Boise Centre on the Grove, which heard a seven-minute speech. He began with a self-deprecating story about the obscurity enveloping some former chief justices.

He asked for raised hands from anyone who could name the chief justice when the U of I law school was founded in 1909. None shot up, so Roberts gave the answer: Melville Fuller, chief from 1888-1910.

“Whenever I’m concerned that maybe the office might be going to my head, I walk into the conference rooms where we have on the wall portraits of all the chief justices,” Roberts said, “familiar names like John Rutledge, Oliver Ellsworth, Morrison Waite, Melville Fuller, Edward White – probably names that many here are hearing for the very first time.”

Roberts didn’t mention that he is only the 17th chief justice since 1789. He also omitted the names of more famous chiefs: John Marshall, Roger Taney, Salmon P. Chase, William Howard Taft, Charles Evans Hughes, Earl Warren, Warren Burger and William Rehnquist.

Before his talk, Roberts attended a private reception for elected officials and other dignitaries, posing for pictures with Gov. Butch Otter, other statewide elected officials, legislators and judges.

Dave Leroy, a former Idaho attorney general, was delighted to have Roberts autograph a book once owned by Chief Justice Burger, “Disorder in the Court,” a 1974 analysis of civility in the courts. The book is inscribed to Burger and includes his bookplate, which simply reads, “The Chief Justice.” Leroy, a collector, bought the book in Washington, D.C. The boo

The evening included food, drinks and brief remarks by Otter and law school Dean Don Burnett. A 2008 graduate, Mikela French, sat at the head table and offered a testament to the quality of a U of I law education. French is now clerking for Idaho Supreme Court Justice Joel Horton.

Roberts’ visit comes two weeks after he wrote the opinion upholding an Idaho law that bars public-employee unions from using payroll deductions to fund political action committees. Roberts’ opinion held that the ban does not violate First Amendment rights.

Roberts, 54, is the fourth Supreme Court justice to deliver the Bellwood, following Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Antonin Scalia and Sandra Day O’Connor. The lecture series was endowed by Sherman Bellwood, a state district judge who died in 1995.