Coordinates	28°36′36″N77°13′48″N
name	Drago Jančar
birth date	April 13, 1948
birth place	Maribor, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (now in Slovenia)
occupation	Writer, Essayist, Playwright
movement	Postmodernism, Magical realism
influences	Ivan Cankar, Mikhail Bulgakov, Hermann Hesse, Czeslaw Milosz, Robert Musil, Danilo Kiš, Franz Kafka, Eugene Ionesco, Dominik Smole, Edvard Kocbek, Boris Pahor, Jorge Luis Borges, T. S. Eliot, Primož Kozak, Rudi Šeligo
influenced	Aleš Debeljak, Feri Lainšček, Dušan Šarotar
website	}}

Drago Jančar (born 13 April 1948) is a Slovenian writer, playwright, essayist and public intellectual. Jančar is one of the most prolific and famous contemporary Slovene writers. In Slovenia, he is also famous for his political commentaries and civic engagement.

Life

He was born in Maribor, an industrial center in what was then the Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Slovenia. His father, originally from the Prekmurje region, was a former partisan. Jančar studied law in his home town. While a student, he became chief editor of the student journal ''Katedra''; he soon came in conflict with the Communist establishment because he published some articles critical of the ruling regime. He had to leave the journal. He soon found a job as an assistant at the Maribor daily newspaper ''Večer''. In 1974 he was arrested by Yugoslav authorities for bringing to Yugoslavia a booklet entitled ''V Rogu ležimo pobiti'' (''We Lie Killed in the Rog Forest''), which he had bought in nearby Austria and lent to some friends. The booklet was a survivor's account of the Kočevski Rog massacres of the Slovene Home Guard war prisoners perpetrated by Josip Broz Tito's regime in May 1945. He was sentenced to a year's imprisonment for "spreading hostile propaganda" but was released after three months. Immediately after his release he was called up for military service in southern Serbia, where he was subjected to systematic harassment by his superiors due to his "criminal file".

After completing military service, Jančar briefly returned to ''Večer'', but he was allowed to perform only administrative work. He decided to move to Ljubljana, where he came into contact with several influential artists and intellectuals who were also critical of the cultural policies of the Communist establishment, among them Edvard Kocbek, Ivan Urbančič, Alenka Puhar, Marjan Rožanc, and Rudi Šeligo. Between 1978 and 1980, he worked as a screenwriter in the film studio Viba Film, but he quit because his adaptation of Vitomil Zupan's script for Živojin Pavlović's movie ''See You in the Next War'' was censored. In 1981, he worked as a secretary for the ''Slovenska matica'' publishing house, where he is now an editor. In 1982, he was among the co-founders of the journal ''Nova revija'', which soon emerged as the major alternative and opposition voice in Socialist Slovenia. He also befriended Boris Pahor, the Slovene writer from Trieste who wrote about his experience in the Nazi concentration camps. Jančar has frequently pointed out Pahor's profound influence on him, especially in the essay "The Man Who Said No" (1990), one of the first comprehensive assessments of Pahor's literary and moral role in the post-war era in Slovenia.

Early in his career, Jančar was not allowed to publish his works, but when Kardelj's and Tito's deaths in the late 1970s led to gradual liberalisation, he was able to work as a screenwriter and playwright. In the mid-1980s, he gained initial success with his novels and short stories, while his plays earned recognition throughout Yugoslavia. From the late 1980s on, his fame began to grow outside the country, especially in Central Europe.

Since the early 1990s, he has worked as an editor at the ''Slovenska matica'' publishing house in Ljubljana. In 1993, he received the Prešeren Award, the highest award for literary and artistic achievements in Slovenia.

Work

Jančar started writing as a teenager. His first short novels were published by the magazine ''Mladina''.

Jančar's prose is influenced by modernist models. One of the central themes of his works is the conflict between individuals and repressive institutions, such as prisons, galleys, psychiatric hospitals and military barracks. He is famous for his laconic and highly ironic style, which often makes use of tragicomic twists. Most of his novels explore concrete events and circumstances in Central European history, which he sees as an exemplification of the human condition.

He also writes essays and columns on the current political and cultural situation. During the war in Bosnia, he voiced his support for the Bosnian cause and personally visited the besieged Sarajevo to take supplies collected by the Slovene Writers' Association to the civilian population. In his essay "Short Report from a City Long Besieged" (''Kratko poročilo iz dolgo obleganega mesta''), he reflected on the War in Yugoslavia and the more general question of the ambiguous role of intellectuals in ethnic, national and political conflicts.

Throughout the 1990s, he engaged in polemics with the Austrian writer Peter Handke regarding the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

The public intellectual

Between 1987 and 1991 Jančar served as president of the Slovene PEN Center and used the position to support the emergence of Slovenian democracy. In 1987, he was among the authors of the Contributions to the Slovenian National Program, an intellectual manifesto calling for a democratic, pluralistic and sovereign Slovenian state. During the Ljubljana trial in spring and summer 1988, he was one of the organizers of the first opposition political rally in Slovenia since 1945, which was held on the central Congress Square in Ljubljana. In the run-up to the first democratic elections in April 1990, Jančar actively campaigned for the oppositional presidential candidate Jože Pučnik. During the Slovenian War of Independence, he and several other writers helped rally international support for Slovenia's independence.

In the late 1990s, he and historian Vasko Simoniti organized the exhibition ''Temna stran meseca'' (''The Dark Side of the Moon''), which dealt with human rights violations in Slovenia during the Communist dictatorship. In 2000, Slovenia's most widely read daily newspaper, ''Delo'', published his controversial essay "Xenos and Xenophobia", which accused the Slovenian liberal media of inciting xenophobia and Anti-Catholicism (Jančar himself is an agnostic). He had been accusing the liberal media of similar attitudes since 1994, when his essay "Egyptian Pots of Meat" blamed the media for having helped the rise of the chauvinistic Slovenian National Party.

Although Jančar has never actively participated in politics, he publicly supported the Slovenian Democratic Party during the general elections of 2000 and 2004.

In 2004, he was among the co-founders of the liberal conservative civic platform Rally for the Republic ().

Recognition and reception

Jančar's novels, essays and short stories have been translated into 21 languages and published in Europe, Asia and the United States. The most numerous translation are into German, followed by Czech and Croatian translations.

His dramas have also been staged by a number of foreign theatres, while back home they are frequently considered the highlights of the Slovenian theatrical season. Jančar has received a number of literary awards, including the Prešeren Award, Slovenia's most prestigious literary award; the European Short Story Award (Augsburg, 1994); and the Herder Prize for literature in 2003. Since 1995, he has been a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

He lives and works in Ljubljana.

Selected bibliography

Novels

''Petintrideset stopinj'' (Thirtyfive Degrees, 1974)

''Galjot'' (Galiot, 1978)

''Severni sij'' (Northern Lights, 1984)

''Pogled angela'' (Angel's Gaze)(1992)

''Posmehljivo poželenje'' (Mocking Desire, 1993)

''Zvenenje v glavi'' (Ringing in the Head, 1998)

''Katarina, pav in jezuit'' (Katerina, 2000)

''Graditelj'' (The Builder, 2006)

''Drevo brez imena'' (The Tree with No Name, 2008)

''To noč sem jo videl'' (I Saw Her That Night, 2010)

Plays

''Disident Arnož in njegovi'' (Dissident Arnož and his Band, 1982)

''Veliki briljantni valček'' (The Great Brilliant Waltz, 1985)

''Vsi tirani mameluki so hud konec vzeli ...'' (All Mameluk Tyrants had a Bad End..., 1986)

''Daedalus'' (Daedalus, 1988)

''Klementov padec'' (Klement's Fall, 1988)

''Zalezujoč Godota'' (After Godot, 1988)

''Halštat'' (Hallstatt, 1994)

''Severni sij'' (Northern Lights, 2005)

''Niha ura tiha'' (The Silently Oscillating Clock, 2007)

Essays

''Razbiti vrč'' (The Broken Jug, 1992)

''Egiptovski lonci mesa'' (Egyptian Pots of Meat, 1994)

''Brioni'' (Brioni, 2002)

''Duša Evrope'' (Europe's Soul, 2006)

See also

List of Slovenian writers

Slovenian literature

Culture of Slovenia

Simona Škrabec

External links

Jean Améry-Prize to Drago Jančar "Drago Jančar: Critical Observer of Society" (Article in Slovenia News) Short Biography in the Journal Transcript (with picture)

Video of Drago Jančar in a public reading on the 1988 demonstration against the repressive policies of the Yugoslav regime

dB, or a Brief History of Noise, essai by Drago Jančar January 2010

References

SiGledal: Drago Jančar

Category:Slovenian writers Category:Slovenian dramatists and playwrights Category:Slovenian novelists Category:Slovenian short story writers Category:Slovenian essayists Category:Members of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts Category:1948 births Category:Living people Category:Prešeren laureates Category:People from Maribor Category:University of Maribor alumni

bg:Драго Янчар cs:Drago Jančar de:Drago Jančar es:Drago Jančar fr:Drago Jančar it:Drago Jančar lt:Drago Jančar pl:Drago Jančar ro:Drago Jančar ru:Янчар, Драго sk:Drago Jančar sl:Drago Jančar sv:Drago Jančar uk:Драґо Янчар

Coordinates	28°36′36″N77°13′48″N
name	Owen Josephus Roberts
office	Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
termstart	May 20, 1930
termend	July 31, 1945
nominator	Herbert Hoover
predecessor	Edward Terry Sanford
successor	Harold Hitz Burton
birth date	May 2, 1875
birth place	Philadelphia, PA
death date	May 17, 1955 (aged 80)
death place	West Vincent, PA
spouse	}}

Owen Josephus Roberts (May 2, 1875 – May 17, 1955) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court for fifteen years. He also led the fact-finding commission that investigated the attack on Pearl Harbor. At the time of World War II, he was the only Republican appointed Judge on the Supreme Court of the United States and one of only three to vote against Franklin D. Roosevelt's orders for Japanese American internment camps in ''Korematsu v. United States''.

Early life and career

Roberts was born in Philadelphia and attended Germantown Academy and the University of Pennsylvania, where he was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society and was the editor of ''The Daily Pennsylvanian''. He completed his bachelor's degree in 1895 and went on to graduate at the top of his class from University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1898.

He first gained notice as an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia. He was appointed by President Calvin Coolidge to investigate oil reserve scandals, known as the Teapot Dome scandal. This led to the prosecution and conviction of Albert B. Fall, the former Secretary of the Interior, for bribe-taking.

Supreme Court

Roberts was appointed to the Supreme Court by Herbert Hoover after Hoover's nomination of John J. Parker was defeated by the Senate.

On the Court, Roberts was a swing vote between those, led by Justices Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, and Harlan Fiske Stone, as well as Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, who would allow a broader interpretation of the Commerce Clause to allow Congress to pass New Deal legislation that would provide for a more active federal role in the national economy, and the Four Horsemen (Justices James Clark McReynolds, Pierce Butler, George Sutherland, and Willis Van Devanter) who favored a narrower interpretation of the Commerce Clause and believed that the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause protected a strong "liberty of contract." In 1936's ''United States v. Butler'', Roberts sided with the Four Horsemen and wrote an opinion striking down the Agricultural Adjustment Act as beyond Congress's Commerce powers.

"Switch in Time that Saved the Nine"

Roberts switched his position on the constitutionality of the New Deal in late 1936, and the Supreme Court handed down ''West Coast Hotel v. Parrish'' in 1937, upholding the constitutionality of minimum wage laws. Subsequently, the Court would vote to uphold all New Deal programs. Since President Roosevelt's plan to appoint several new justices as part of his "Court-packing" plan of 1937 coincided with the Court's favorable decision in Parrish, many people called Roberts's vote in that case the "switch in time that saved nine," although Roberts's vote in ''Parrish'' occurred several months before announcement of the Court-packing plan. While Roberts is often accused of inconsistency in his jurisprudential stance towards the New Deal, legal scholars note that he had previously argued for a broad interpretation of government power in the 1934 case of ''Nebbia v. New York'', and so his later vote in ''Parrish'' was not a complete reversal.

Roberts wrote the majority opinion in the landmark case of ''New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery Co.'', , which safeguarded the right to boycott in the context of the struggle by African Americans against discriminatory hiring practices. He also wrote the majority opinion sustaining provisions of the second Agricultural Adjustment Act applied to the marketing of tobacco in ''Mulford v. Smith'', .

Roberts was appointed by Roosevelt to head the commission investigating the attack on Pearl Harbor; his report was published in 1942 and was highly critical of the United States Military. Journalist John T. Flynn wrote at the time that Roosevelt's appointment of Roberts:

was a master stroke. What the public overlooked was that Roberts had been one of the most clamorous among those screaming for an open declaration of war. He had doffed his robes, taken to the platform in his frantic apprehensions and demanded that we immediately unite with Great Britain in a single nation. The Pearl Harbor incident had given him what he had been yelling for – America's entrance into the war. On the war issue he was one of the President's most impressive allies. Now he had his wish. He could be depended on not to cast any stain upon it in its infancy.

Perhaps influenced by his work on the Pearl Harbor commission, Roberts dissented from the Court's decision upholding internment of Japanese-Americans along the West Coast in 1944's ''Korematsu v. United States''.

In his later years on the bench, Roberts was the only Justice on the Supreme Court not appointed (or in the case of Stone, who had become Chief Justice, promoted) by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roberts became frustrated with the willingness of the new justices to overturn precedent and with what he saw as their result-oriented liberalism as judges. Roberts dissented bitterly in the 1944 case of ''Smith v. Allwright'', which in finding the white primary unconstitutional overruled an opinion Roberts himself had written nine years previously. It was in his dissent in that case that he coined the oft-quoted phrase that the frequent overruling of decisions "tends to bring adjudications of this tribunal into the same class as a restricted railroad ticket, good for this day and train only."

Roberts retired from the Court the following year, in 1945; Roberts's relations with his colleagues had become so strained that fellow Justice Hugo Black refused to sign the customary letter acknowledging Roberts's service on his retirement. Other justices refused to sign a modified letter that would have been acceptable to Black, and in the end, no letter was ever sent.

Shortly after leaving the Court, Roberts reportedly burned all of his legal and judicial papers. As a result, there is no significant collection of Roberts' manuscript papers, as there is for most other modern Justices. Roberts did prepare a short memorandum discussing his alleged change of stance around the time of the court-packing effort, which he left in the hands of Justice Felix Frankfurter.

Later life

While in retirement Roberts, along with Robert P. Bass, convened the Dublin Declaration, a plan to change the U.N. General Assembly into a world legislature with "limited but definite and adequate power for the prevention of war."

Roberts served as the Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School from 1948 to 1951.

He died at his Chester County (Pennsylvania) farm after a four-month illness. He was survived by his wife, Elizabeth Caldwell Rogers, and daughter, Elizabeth Hamilton.

Germantown Academy named its debate society after Owen J. Roberts in his honor. In addition, a school district near Pottstown, Pennsylvania, the Owen J. Roberts School District, adopted his name.

In 1946 he was the first lay person elected to serve as President of the House of Deputies for the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. He served for one convention.

See also

List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States

List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States

List of United States Chief Justices by time in office

List of U.S. Supreme Court Justices by time in office

United States Supreme Court cases during the Hughes Court

United States Supreme Court cases during the Stone Court

Notes

References

"The Roberts Commission and Pearl Harbor," in Kenneth Kitts, ''Presidential Commissions and National Security'' (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006).

Germantown Academy, Clubs and Organizations

Sources

Further reading

Abraham, Henry J., ''Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court. 3d. ed.'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). ISBN 0-19-506557-3.

Cushman, Clare, ''The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies,1789-1995'' (2nd ed.) (Supreme Court Historical Society), (Congressional Quarterly Books, 2001) ISBN 1568021267; ISBN 9781568021263.

Frank, John P., ''The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions'' (Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, editors) (Chelsea House Publishers: 1995) ISBN 0791013774, ISBN 978-0791013779.

Martin, Fenton S. and Goehlert, Robert U., ''The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography'', (Congressional Quarterly Books, 1990). ISBN 0871875543.

Urofsky, Melvin I., ''The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary'' (New York: Garland Publishing 1994). 590 pp. ISBN 0815311761; ISBN 978-0815311768.

External links

Category:1875 births Category:1955 deaths Category:Law school deans Category:Former Daily Pennsylvanian staff Category:University of Pennsylvania alumni Category:University of Pennsylvania Law School alumni Category:United States Supreme Court justices

fr:Owen Roberts pt:Owen Josephus Roberts