Saturday, March 3, 2012

"Chief Justice John Roberts of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Justice Roberts and a Martian Jurist entering their Dissent into the Record

In the final days of the Second Civil War, Conservatism and its partisans fear they have seen their last gasp with the Burning of Colorado Springs by Sky Admiral Mike Mullen. At this same moment, Calvary Man and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts is lost in the wastes of a forgotten oasis, about to shoot his wheezing horse Ginsburg. Before the old nag can be put out of her misery, Roberts is set upon by a roving band of UC-Boulder undergrads and acting quickly takes shelter in a nearby cave, but losing his footing he slips and appears to die. But the appearance of cruel death is only an apparition, and while Roberts lies inanimate in the cave on Earth, strange Cosmic operations take effect. By means of astral projection, he awakes in a new land, Mars!

"By Federalism! The lesser gravity of Mars makes me more than a mere Harvard Man, I am a man of legend and greater strength, truly my jurisdiction on this strange planet is unlimited." - Roberts leaping twenty feet into the air, naked but for a copy of Black's Law Dictionary.

"Stranger, how can you lead us? We do not doubt your strength, but rather your impartiality to judge."
"Hear this, you green-faced, four-armed people of the Wastes, the job of a good judge is not to make law, but rather to serve as an umpire, calling balls and strikes. While I may have just beheaded thirty-five of your War Lords, I assure you I am no activist." - Roberts subdues the Green Men of Barsoom

"
The chariots themselves were large, commodious, and gorgeously decorated but later, when I had become acquainted with their customs, I learned that I had won what they seldom accord, a manifestation of approbation, and after they completed the work I went about garbed in all the panoply of war......Earth men, almost without exception, cover their bodies with strange, unsightly pieces of cloth, and their heads with hideous contraptions the purpose of which we have been unable to conceive..." -Dicta from Roberts' concurring opinion in The Endless Yellow Moss Vegetation v. The Giant Purple Two-Headed Centipede, 121 Mars App. 4th 231.

"She was indeed, as her fellow Martian had said of her, an atavism, a dear and precious reversion to a former type of loved and loving ancestor. I would much rather not have told her anything of my antecedents, but no man could look into the depth of those eyes and refuse her slightest behest." - Justice Roberts on meeting Princess of Mars, Whitney Houston

"His manners were perfect, and his courtliness was that of a typical Southern gentleman of the highest type." - Princess Whitney Houston

“I was always kind and humane in my dealings with the lower orders. I could take a human life, if necessary, with far less compunction than that of a poor, unreasoning, irresponsible brute.” - Justice Roberts' Majority Opinion in Mastery of the Portal v. Freedom for All Creatures, 320 Mars 12 (finding for reasons of public policy in favor of 'Eternal Slavery').

"Sure, I miss the robes and the Secret Service detail, but where else do you get the kick of the law while also being able to go around naked except for a red cape and a sword and just kill everything you come across? Plus I've got Whitney and things are going great. Okay, Tars Tarkas and the Yellow People think we need more Red Men on the Court, and I can accept that, but I'll be damned if we put cameras in the Chamber of Brass during oral argument." - the Legend Himself before mysteriously awakening in Buffalo with a terrible headache

The Chief Justice courts Princess Houston of Mars

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