[Mb-civic] Dossier: John G. Roberts Jr. - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

On Tuesday, July 19, President Bush nominated John G. Roberts Jr. to be 
associate justice of the Supreme Court.

Biography

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John G. Roberts Jr., 50, has long been considered one of the 
Republicans' heavyweights amid the largely Democratic Washington legal 
establishment. Roberts was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for 
the D.C. Circuit in 2003 by President George W. Bush. (He was also 
nominated by the first President Bush, but never received a Senate 
vote.) Previously, he practiced law at Washington's Hogan & Hartson from 
1986-1989 and 1993-2003. Between 1989 and 1993, he was the principal 
deputy solicitor general in the first Bush administration, helping 
formulate the administration's position in Supreme Court cases. During 
the Reagan administration, he served as an aide to Attorney General 
William French Smith from 1981 to 1982 and as an aide to White House 
counsel Fred Fielding from 1982 to 1986.

With impeccable credentials -- Roberts attended Harvard College and 
Harvard Law School, clerked for Justice William H. Rehnquist on the 
Supreme Court and has argued frequently before the court -- the question 
marks about Roberts have always been ideological. While his Republican 
Party loyalties are undoubted, earning him the opposition of liberal 
advocacy groups, he is not a "movement conservative," and some on the 
party's right-wing doubt his commitment to their cause. His paper record 
is thin: As deputy solicitor general in 1990, he argued in favor of a 
government regulation that banned abortion-related counseling by 
federally funded family-planning programs. A line in his brief noted the 
Bush administration's belief that Roe v. Wade should be overruled.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/19/AR2005071900870.html
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