Where He Stands

There is no doubt that John Roberts has all the credentials that a President could ask for in a Supreme Court nominee: the Harvard degrees, the federal clerkships, the government service and the years at a white-shoe Washington law firm. But in the post-Bork age, with the opposition ready to pounce on a nominee's judicial or academic record, Roberts also boasts that most prized feature of a résumé--a relatively short paper trail. For a man widely considered one of the brightest legal minds of his generation, Roberts has made very few of his personal views known in either scholarly writings or high-profile judicial opinions, which is exactly what conservatives hope will make his nomination bulletproof.

Roberts, after all, has been a federal appeals judge for only a little more than two years, on a court that hears primarily arcane cases concerning administrative and regulatory law rather than the broad constitutional issues before the Supreme Court. And in his roles as a hired corporate gun or a political appointee, as he and many other lawyers see it, he was simply representing the interests of his clients or his boss, including those of the President. That may well be true. But what is at stake is a lifetime appointment as the replacement for the court's key swing vote, so that is a distinction that liberal interest groups and at least a few Senate Democrats are likely to ignore.

Not every case Roberts has worked on will suit their purposes. Although for the most part he has shown a reliably conservative streak, Roberts has also taken some surprising stances, defending the rights of welfare recipients, criminal defendants and prisoners in pro bono cases, for instance, and representing the state attorneys general in their antitrust case against Microsoft. Still, while usually taking a fairly pragmatic approach to the law, Roberts has by and large demonstrated a consistent legal philosophy: it stresses relative judicial restraint and takes a limited view of congressional power but a broader view of executive privilege, all the while putting a strong emphasis on individual responsibility and law and order. With that in mind, here is a guide to what Roberts has written or said over the years concerning the most important legal issues of the day, as well as some of the relevant cases that are coming before the Supreme Court in the next term. --With reporting by Viveca Novak and Eric Roston/Washington

ABORTION

During Senate confirmation hearings in 2003, Roberts stressed that he had no personal issue with applying the precedent of Roe v. Wade, which he called "the settled law of the land." But during his stint as Principal Deputy Solicitor General from 1989 to 1993, Roberts co-authored briefs in two controversial Supreme Court cases, one that upheld federal rules prohibiting clinics that received federal dollars from even discussing abortions and another that helped to successfully defend pro-life protesters who had blocked entry to abortion clinics against charges that they had thereby violated the rights of women. "We continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled," stated the brief in the gag-order case, Rust v. Sullivan.

Upcoming Cases: One centers on the constitutionality of a New Hampshire parental-notification law, which includes an exception for life-threatening pregnancies but not other health problems.