Owen Roberts
Owen Josephus Roberts ( born May 2, 1875 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, † May 17 1955 in West Vincent, Pennsylvania) was an American jurist who both judges on the U.S. Supreme Court ( U.S. Supreme Court ), as well as Dean of the Law Faculty of the University of Pennsylvania was.
Life
Lawyer and Attorney
After visiting the German Town Academy, he studied at the University of Pennsylvania and earned a Bachelor of Arts there in 1895 (BA). A subsequent study of law at the Law School, he graduated from there in 1898 and was also a member of the Phi Beta Kappa academic connection. After his subsequent attorney's admission he first worked as a lawyer and then from 1901 to 1904 Deputy Attorney of Philadelphia County. Upon completion of this activity, he was the first lawyer to 1912 at the law firm White & White, before 1912 with partners, the firm Roberts & Montgomery founded and practiced in this in the next few years.
In 1923 he was appointed by U.S. President Calvin Coolidge to the Republican special prosecutor to investigate the Teapot Dome scandal, in which it came to the allocation of petroleum development rights. His investigation led to the indictment of Albert B. case, the Minister of the Interior under President Warren G. Harding, who was eventually sentenced to imprisonment for corruption.
Judge of the U.S. Supreme Court
On June 2, 1930 Roberts, who was also a member of the American Philosophical Society, was appointed by U.S. President Herbert Hoover as the successor of Edward Terry Sanford for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was actually as a stopgap, as the favored candidate of Hoover for the office of Chief Justice, John Johnston Parker, failed to receive the necessary approval in the U.S. Senate by one vote. The office of Associate Justice, he held more than 15 years until his resignation on 31 July 1945.
Roberts was most recently the only judge who was not appointed by Hoover's successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was for many years in addition to Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the " tip the scales " because the Judge James C. McReynolds, George Sutherland, Pierce Butler and Willis Van Devanter than the so-called "four horsemen " of the conservative wing formed, while the Justice Louis Brandeis, Benjamin N. Cardozo and Harlan Fiske Stone rather liberal views represented as the " Three Musketeers". His changing views led to the saying "Switch in Time Saved did the Nine ", since its timely changes to ensure the decisions of the nine judges of the Supreme Court led.
Among the most important decisions in which he participated, the decision belonged to the so-called " fruit of the poisoned tree " in the process Nardone v. United States from the year 1939., This landmark judgment grounded in U.S. law a broader prohibition on illegally obtained evidence.
Roberts was also chairman of a commission to investigate the circumstances and facts about the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941., 1943, he led a re Roberts Commission called Commission for the Protection of Monuments in the war.
After his resignation as judge and his replacement by Harold Hitz Burton, he became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was most recently 1948-1951 Dean of the local Law School, the Law School. Roberts was buried after his death at the Saint Andrews Cemetery in West Vincent.