William Taft was Secretary of War in the Roosevelt administration not Vice President. Martin Van Buren was the only VP before Bush to go directly to the Presidency.
:smack: I knew I should have checked.
Not really. The only duties the Chief Justice has that the other justices don’t is that he presides over sessions of the court and if he’s in the majority he writes the court’s opinion (or assigns it to another justice). If he’s in the minority or abstains from deliberations the senior associate justice.
P.S. The Chief Justice is also the Chancellor of the Smithsonian Institution.
I believe SCOTUS is the accepted abbreviation.
Sorry Cliffy, I didn’t mean to imply that your comments were incorrect in any way. I was just responding to Scupper’s question, asking if it “Wouldn’t it be better for Bush’s agenda to appoint an existing member, thus vacating a slot and allowing him to nominate another conservative to fill the newly-vacated slot?”
Your answer certainly gave reasons why the Chief Justice is more powerful and influential than the other Justices, but it did not address the misconception inherent in that question, which is essentially asking why Bush doesn’t use the option that gives him an additional conservative on the court. The answer to that question, as I said, is that option doesn’t exist. He gets one conservative to replace Renquist whether he nominates a current Justice for Chief Justice and then nominates a new Associate Justice, or whether he nominates for Chief Justice someone who is not currently on the Supreme Court.
And presides over the Senate during an impeachment trial.
Correction. When the Senate sits as the Court for the Trial of Impeachments, the Vice President presides in his capacity as President of the Senate. But when the President (and presumably the Vice President) is the person impeached, the Chief Justice presides, the reason being to avoid putting the VP in a conflict of interests. Article I, Section 3, clause 6 provides that the CJ preside over the trial of the President; it would be my assumption that the VP would not be allowed to preside over his own trial, and hence either the President Pro Tem of the Senate or the Chief Justice would be required to preside. But of course I have no cite to prove that.
And is the banker when the SCOTUS has its annual “Monopoly” tournament during recess.
The Chief, in addition to presiding over the Supreme Court, is also the administrative head of the Federal court system, with significant authority over the lower Federal courts. Someone with access to the Federal court rules will have to specify what, but I know that the CJ’s influence on District and Circuit Courts is not lightly disregarded.
As for the assignment of opinions, the rule is: (1) When the Chief Justice is in the majority, he decides who will write the majority opinion; (2) when the Chief recuses himself or is in the minority, the senior Associate Justice in the majority does the assignment. This can include retaining the opinion for himself or picking the justice most likely to keep a majority, a significant point in 5-4 decisions where one man may decide to write a concurrence rather than joining in what would have been the majority opinion, reducing that opinion from the status of law to the equivalent of a dissent or concurrence. (In theory, the chief and the three senior associates could constitute a minority of four, and the #4 most senior justice do the assigning. In practice, it’s the Chief and one or two senior Associates who often disagree with him who handle the assignments.
As well as the writing styles of their law clerks… 
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both were Veep when elected President.
Is there an echo in here?
–Cliffy
I heard some radio report this weekend where Supreme Court scholars weighing in on various aspects of the appointment processs. Someone said that it’s often better to appoint a Chief Justice from outside. They said that after years of working together, the justices have their loyalties and (more importantly) their grudges. Promoting one of them changes the balance of powers (or balance of pettiness?) in counterproductive ways.
True, although that was before the 12th Amendment changed the VP election procedure.