John Roberts's Other Papers
CONTINETTI, MATTHEW
John Roberts's Other Papers Portrait of the judge as an undergraduate. BY MATTHEW CONTINETTI JOHN ROBERTS was born in Buffalo, New York, and raised in Long Beach, Indiana, but he spent much of...
...Roberts is drawn to Webster's constancy, his ability to engage in politics while behaving as if he were above politics...
...The Websterian leader should be non-partisan," Roberts writes in "The Utopian Conservative": "above demagoguery, concerned for the public good, and, above all, the Websterian leader should be . . . Webster...
...Roberts concludes his thesis by pointing out that "the individual initiative of the [Liberal] Party's most dynamic leaders" helped to counteract forces in the party that "inhibited an energetic confrontation of the social problem...
...Ideas and politics overwhelmed economics...
...Reading "The Utopian Conservative," one is struck again and again by the lucidity of young Roberts's prose, the ease with which he writes, and the style that emerges from his plain language...
...According to a roommate, he "always had a bottle or two on hand"—a bottle or two of Pepto Bismol...
...But neither does Roberts embrace the "Great Man Theory of History" or any other overarching approach...
...These are lovely constructions—sentences you'd expect to find in a Jacques Barzun essay, not in a Harvard undergraduate paper...
...the British welfare state metastasized...
...Established institutions are periodically assailed by new social forces which test their ability to survive," Roberts begins...
...Roberts's central question: "Did the Liberal Party decline because it refused to adapt to the modern polity, with its large proportion of working-class electors, or must the cause of decline be sought elsewhere...
...It's clear, too, that he's immersed himself in the secondary literature...
...The other striking thing is the emphasis Roberts places on the individual...
...By the end of the thesis it is clear that Roberts has given up history for the law...
...But he was an extremely accomplished nerd...
...Lloyd George and Winston Churchill were "doctors" helping the Liberal party to survive...
...As they went, so did their party...
...of humor...
...He liked to quote Samuel Johnson, the English lexicographer and raconteur, to those around him...
...On March 25, 1976, about the time he was finishing "The Utopian Conservative," Roberts submitted his paper on the British Liberal party as his senior honors thesis...
...One of his advisers, William LaPiana, now a professor at New York Law School, told the Crimson that Roberts was a "hard-working and happy undergraduate who loved studying history...
...Roberts matriculated at Harvard in the fall of 1973, graduated summa cum laude three years later, entered Harvard Law that fall, graduated magna cum laude in 1979—and was promptly hospitalized for exhaustion...
...one of his roommates told the Harvard Crimson the other day that "John loved history, and said he'd be a history professor...
...Roberts certainly had the habits of an academic...
...He grows most eloquent when he describes a man of character, a disinterested, self-sacrificing man of wisdom who continually worked with others of his sort to resolve any controversy which threatened national harmony...
...To support his argument, Roberts draws from songs, pamphlets, speeches, and letters of the era...
...Roberts concludes that he was a man out of step with his age...
...And Roberts is drawn to Webster's pragmatism...
...The Union busted...
...neither"—and here Roberts gives us a brief and rare glimpse into his personal beliefs— "is the America of the 1970s...
...his first year, he won the William Scott Ferguson award—given annually to the sophomore history major who writes an "outstanding essay" as part of a class assignment...
...Instead he appropriately acknowledges the impact men like Daniel Webster, David Lloyd George, and Winston Churchill had on the politics and everyday life of their times...
...He and his friends' idea of collegiate athletics was Nerf basketball played in dorm rooms...
...He studied constantly...
...Two things stand out in these old term papers...
...Only a national bank could insure uniformity and fluidity of currency," he writes, "a common concern of the California pioneer, the Kentucky drover, the Alabama planter, and the New York laborer...
...It won the 1976 Bowdoin Prize for Undergraduates, for excellence in English composition, and like all such prizewinners, it's written for the general reader...
...And, more important still, at times Roberts's thesis reads like a legal brief: He always clearly states exactly what will be accomplished in each chapter, and in each section of each chapter, and sometimes in each paragraph of each section of each chapter...
...There are 31 footnotes...
...The British Liberal party, he argues, was no different...
...The Massachusetts senator's "entire public life," writes Roberts, "in one way or another, was to be a variation on this one theme: the rights of property...
...Schumer will subpoena it from the nominee's private papers...
...Roberts's essay was entitled "Marxism and Bolshevism: Theory and Practice...
...Unfortunately, no public copy of it seems to exist...
...He explains: "Rather than measuring the final product against some pre-deter-mined standard and finding it either acceptable or wanting, I hope to examine the matrix from which reform emerged...
...An early reference is to the historian Gertrude Himmel-farb's Victorian Minds...
...One is Roberts's sense Roberts's thesis reads like a legal brief: He always clearly states exactly what will be accomplished in each chapter, and in each section of each chapter...
...Later in the essay, noting a change in Webster's thought, Roberts writes, "Silken cords of affection had replaced iron bonds of interest...
...Matthew Continetti is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...And here's Roberts on David Lloyd George, the last Liberal prime minister: "Passion, intellect, and determination, or, if you prefer—as many did then and now—zealotry, deviousness, and obduracy, were the characteristics which propelled Lloyd George...
...Roberts wrote both papers in his senior year, and while it's safe to say they are bereft of any clues to how Roberts would rule as a Supreme Court justice, they make for lively reading and shed some light on his interests and his character as a young man...
...The anecdotes tend to be isolated, the events only dimly recalled, but taken together they suggest a driven young man, eager to achieve, and possessed of an intellect that would allow him to achieve...
...Roberts also seems to be drawn to noble causes—Webster's attempt to save the Union, Lloyd George and Churchill's program of incremental reform—that end in failure...
...The America of the 1850s was no such society...
...Roberts entered Harvard with sophomore standing...
...There were no parties...
...When Roberts arrived on campus, he was drawn to the study of history...
...For a few bucks the archivists will send you copies of "The Utopian Conservative: A Study of Continuity and Change in the Thought of Daniel Webster" and "Old and New Liberalism: The British Liberal Party's Approach to the Social Problem, 1906-1914...
...There are a few hundred footnotes...
...More important, for our purposes, is Roberts's technique...
...His histories include room for social, cultural, and demographic phenomena, but also clear out a space for individual action...
...Roberts's essay on Daniel Webster, "The Utopian Conservative," is 29 pages long...
...The only question was . . . achieve what...
...Ever since July 19, when President Bush nominated Roberts to replace retiring associate supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor, accounts of the nominee's Harvard days have found their way into newspaper profiles and magazine sidebars...
...It had to cope with the rise of the masses in general and the rise of labor unions in particular—what politicians and critics of the Edwardian era referred to as "the social problem...
...The Liberal party collapsed...
...Webster, attempting desperately to hold the Union together, spent much of his life arguing that the nation's diverse economic interests could act as a glue, binding one region to another...
...A deep respect for courageous intentions and righteous politics courses through Roberts's college papers...
...This essay is considerably longer—a dense 166 pages, plus 9 pages of endnotes and bibliographical material— and includes cartoon illustrations from Punch...
...This runs against the current of most contemporary academic historians, who view history either as driven by abstract and mechanical economic structures, or as the constant conspiring of the powerful against the powerless...
...Webster needed an idealistic society to support his realistic nationalism," writes Roberts, "a society in which class and sectional conflict did not exist...
...Roberts's argument is a complex one, difficult to distill here, but suffice it to say that the Liberal party's problem was that it won working-class votes when it adopted a reform program, and not when it didn't...
...Maybe Sen...
...In a few short pages Roberts outlines the contours of Webster's thought, finding it "essentially consistent," and based "on the solid bed-rock of a world view which remained constant despite the vicissitudes of politics...
...Clever lines, both—well worth a chuckle, and evidence, one likes to think, of Roberts's reported love of P.G...
...Doubtless Roberts saw such qualities in the men he wrote about while at Harvard—and perhaps he aspired to cultivate them in himself...
...Roberts was a nerd, in other words...
...Early on, then, a life in acade-mia was a possibility...
...They were "the gods of Liberal reform...
...It deserved to win...
...Two of Roberts's college history papers survive, however, in the Harvard University Archives...
...The man of character did not fight in the thick of political battles, but rather raised himself above the conflict and stilled it through dispassionate compromise...
...But why did Webster fail...
...Wodehouse...
...The Liberal party formed its last government in 1906, and held power until 1915, then declined precipitously...
...there was civil war...
...BY MATTHEW CONTINETTI JOHN ROBERTS was born in Buffalo, New York, and raised in Long Beach, Indiana, but he spent much of his young adulthood— about six years—in Cambridge, Massachusetts, first as an undergraduate at Harvard College, then as a student at Harvard Law...
...Like any good historian, Roberts acknowledges throughout the limitations of his argument, and he is reluctant to draw conclusions, even though "it is not easy for a student to leave a problem unsolved...
...Webster failed, of course...
...To win a second-year award in your first year is no small thing...
Vol. 10 • August 2005 • No. 44
