Immediately after graduating from the College, Roberts entered HLS.

There he became the managing editor of the Harvard Law Review, a position that, according to classmate Paul K. Rowe ’76, “you didn’t get unless you were among the top four or five intellectually in the class.”

Roberts’ colleagues on the Law Review spoke highly of him.

Elizabeth R. Geise described him earlier this month as an “honest, forthright, decent, and fair person who was always there on time, always did his job, and was kind to everyone.”

“Looking back on it from this vantage point, if you had to make a list of people [at HLS] that who would be plausible choices for becoming a justice, he would be on the list,” said Robert I. Kantowitz, who served as executive editor at the Law Review alongside Roberts and shared an office with him. “Lots of people were smart and talented, but he had the whole package.”

“He was somebody who got along with everyone, who was obviously very bright but not aggressive,” Rowe, who is also a Crimson editor, said earlier this month. “He had a Midwestern reserve about not showing off how smart he was.”

Stephen H. Galebach, who was also on the Law Review, also said Roberts was highly respected in the Law Review’s Gannett House offices.

“John’s reputation was as a first-rate legal thinker and writer,” he said.

Richard W. Shepro ’75, who is also a Crimson editor and was on the Law Review with Roberts, also remembers Roberts for a particular technique Roberts used as an editor. Roberts first covered the page with marks and then erased everything. “Then he calmly wrote down everything we had agreed on, word for word,” Shepro wrote in an e-mail, adding that he has never seen anything like that feat, which Roberts repeated over and over again.

Charles E. Davidow, who served as treasurer of the Law Review when Roberts was managing editor, said that Roberts always worked as a team player.

“Whatever the hours, he never got stressed or angry,” Davidow said. “He was just the type of person you want in a high-stress job where you have to spend time together.”

Rowe also said that the students on the Law Review always thought of Roberts as fair, especially on politically divisive issues. “There was a certain amount of left versus right, but John was someone that everyone could talk to and respected.”

“I never thought of him as an ideologue,” Lindsay A. Conner, who was also on the Law Review with Roberts, wrote in an e-mail two weeks ago. But Conner said that he does not know how Roberts has changed since he left Harvard 26 years ago.

However, one colleague said that, even during his time on the Law Review, Roberts was on the conservative side of the political spectrum.

Kirkland and Ellis Professor of Law David B. Wilkins ’77 said earlier this month that Roberts was “more conservative than the typical Harvard Law student in the 1970s.” But Wilkins said that today’s political climate is very different from that of the mid-seventies.