WASHINGTON - John Glover Roberts Jr. won confirmation as the 17th chief justice of the United States on Thursday, charged by the Senate with the responsibility of leading the Supreme Court through turbulent social issues for generations to come.
He was being sworn-in at the White House later in the day by Justice John Paul Stevens, the court's senior member and acting chief justice since the death of William H. Rehnquist.
The Senate voted 78-22 to confirm Roberts — a 50-year-old U.S. appeals judge from the Washington suburb of Chevy Chase, Md. — as Rehnquist's successor. All 55 of the Senate's majority Republicans, and half of the Democrats, voted for Roberts....