The AP's Jesse J. Holland reports that it's official.

John Glover Roberts Jr. won confirmation as the 17th chief justice of the United States Thursday, overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate to lead the Supreme Court through turbulent social issues for generations to come.

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 the successor to the late William H. Rehnquist, who died earlier this month. All of the Senate's majority Republicans, and about half of the Democrats, voted for Roberts.

I'm not certain that I would call the vote "overwhelming," given that the other justices on the Court -- with the exception of Thomas -- have had much closer to unanimous support.

• Stephen Breyer -- 87 to 9
  
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- 96 to 3
  
• Clarence Thomas -- 52 to 48
  
• David Souter -- 90 to 9
  
• Anthony Kennedy -- 97 to 0
  
• Antonin Scalia -- 98 to 0
  
• Sandra Day O'Connor -- 99 to 0
  
• John Paul Stevens -- 99 to 0

Nevertheless, Roberts should be congratulated. We hope that he is as fair and open-minded as Chief Justice as he appeared during his confirmation hearings.