[Mb-civic] As Chief, Roberts Would Be Tested - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

As Chief, Roberts Would Be Tested

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 18, 2005; Page A06

Justice John Paul Stevens is widely regarded as one of the most liberal 
members of the Supreme Court, and regularly spars with conservative 
Antonin Scalia.

But when he approached an old acquaintance at the American Bar 
Association's annual meeting in Chicago last month, he was upbeat about 
President Bush's selection of another cerebral conservative, John G. 
Roberts Jr., for the court.
"Isn't it great news?" Stevens, 85, said, according to the acquaintance, 
who asked not to be named because it was a private conversation.

Roberts was still a nominee for associate justice at the time, but 
Stevens's attitude toward him illustrates an advantage he would bring to 
the role of chief justice -- a role he is all but certain to play after 
his four days of hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.

Roberts is a former law clerk and close friend of the man he would 
replace, the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, and he is a 
veteran of 39 oral arguments before the court. That makes him a known 
quantity to all eight justices, a person they understand to be familiar 
with the personal relationships and bureaucratic rhythms that have grown 
up over the past 11 years of unchanging membership at the court.

"I have watched Judge Roberts since he has been an advocate before our 
court," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said in July, when Roberts was 
originally slated to replace her when she retired. "And I and my 
colleagues have been enormously impressed with his scholarship and his 
skills."

Roberts will need all of those skills, once the Senate completes work on 
his nomination this month, as he tries to fashion majorities -- and to 
guide a comfortable-in-its-ways group of jurists through a transitional 
period.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/17/AR2005091700947.html
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