Judging Mr. Right

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Such scrutiny, however, does not rule out a surprise, either a scandal in the past --or a path in the future unknown for now even to Roberts. Some Justices, like conservatives Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, have consistently played to type; some, like John Paul Stevens and David Souter, ignored the beliefs of the Republican Presidents who picked them. And some, like O'Connor, have evolved over their tenure and been powerful precisely because they could be unpredictable. There is no way to be certain what effect the court will have on each new member. Appointed for life, they answer to one another and their consciences, and so for now one can only imagine what that conversation might sound like.

BOY WONDER

Roberts' resume reads so perfectly that it is easy to find the little flakes of destiny littered through his storybook life. Born in Buffalo, N.Y., but raised in Long Beach, Ind., a small town sprung from the sand dunes on the southeastern edge of Lake Michigan, Roberts was in second grade when he won his first case. He had got in a fight with classmate Timmy, which climaxed with his hurling an orange at Timmy's head and splattering a classroom wall instead. Called to account in the principal's office, he argued that the classroom mess was "all Timmy's fault--if he hadn't ducked, the orange wouldn't have hit the wall." His longtime pal Richard Lazarus, now a law professor at Georgetown, laughs as he tells the story, which has become a piece of family legend. "What truly astounded the principal at the time," he says, "is that he actually had been persuaded it was Timmy's fault."

Most early impressions of Roberts cast him as a nobler character: big brain, big heart. He was the kind of boy whose eighth-grade math teacher kept his birthday in her birthday book all these years, alone among her generations of students. "I like to think that was an omen for wonderful things to come," says Dorothea Liddell. He was way clever, she recalls, so much so that if he didn't get a concept she knew she had to teach it again, but "he never flaunted his intelligence over the other kids." Classmate Betsy Starr Swan remembers the science fair in which her team's water-purification exhibit lost out to a Roberts-designed automatic table fork. "I don't think he ever lost a spelling bee. We'd all line up at the chalkboard, but we knew John was going to win." When he got things wrong, classmates assumed it was the teacher who had made the mistake.

For high school, Roberts applied to La Lumiere, a competitive Catholic boarding school about 12 miles away in La Porte, Ind. "I won't be content to get a good job by getting a good education," he wrote at age 13 in an application letter. "I want to get the best job by getting the best education." It was an all boys' school when Roberts entered in 1969--"Most of our dating life came from observing the school dog, Daisy," says schoolmate Tommy Kerrigan--and free time was consumed by three mandatory sports (Roberts ran track, wrestled and was co-captain of his football team), the newspaper (he was co-editor) and drama (he once played Peppermint Patty in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown). Not everyone in an all boys' school is willing to play a girl; it takes an extra gene, the one that lets you not take yourself too seriously.