Legal scholars and commentators are debating whether to restructure the office of the chief justice of the United States to reduce the position's administrative and judicial duties. Recent proposals include rotating the role of presiding over oral arguments among the nine justices and transferring the authority to assign majority opinions. The current chief justice, John Roberts, has served in the role since September 29, 2005.
The U.S. Constitution mentions the chief justice only once, stating the officeholder shall preside over presidential impeachment trials. Other duties have developed through tradition and acts of Congress. In 1790, President George Washington viewed the first chief justice, John Jay, as an executive advisor, and Congress appointed the chief justice as a sinking fund administrator. Over time, the justices declined advisory roles, leading to the current structure where the chief justice serves as the head of the federal judicial system in matters of judicial administration.
The chief justice currently manages three major administrative components: presiding over the 26-judge U.S. Judicial Conference, acting as the judiciary's primary spokesperson, and designating judges for specialized bodies like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The Judicial Conference oversees the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts. The judiciary has a $10 billion budget and approximately 30,000 employees. Law professor Josh Blackman and other commentators have argued that vesting policy-related powers in one life-tenured individual is undemocratic.
For federal court employees and judges, changes to the office could alter workplace conduct policies and the judicial discipline machinery. Currently, the chief justice appoints 25 committees that handle these administrative matters. If duties were reassigned, the oversight of financial disclosures for justices and the physical security protocols for federal judges might be managed by a rotating group of officials or a committee rather than a single individual.
Policy experts have suggested two primary alternatives to the current system: establishing term limits for the chief justice or delegating specific duties to other justices or lower-court judges. Congress previously established seven-year terms for chief circuit and district judges in 1982, but no such limit exists for the chief justice. While any change to the role in presidential impeachments would require a constitutional amendment, most other administrative functions are statutory. No legislative deadlines for these proposals have been reported.