Judging Mr. Right

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Jane Roberts is a lawyer who specialized in satellite-technology law and now oversees attorney training at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, an international firm. Married in their early 40s, the couple struggled to have children and was finally able to adopt John (Jack) and Josephine, who were born 4½ months apart. "As frequently happens when you go through the adoption process, some of the efforts weren't successful, and it continued for a time," says Jane's law partner and friend Jack McKay. "But when the opportunity came along to have not just one but two children, they took both babies without blinking." Roberts is a hands-on dad who plays a mean game of Candyland and enjoys trick-or-treat duty on Halloween. "We used to have hobbies," Jane tells colleagues, "but we do kids now." They are active at Church of the Little Flower, a Catholic congregation in a well-heeled section of Bethesda, Md. Jane's volunteer efforts help promote adoption and parenting resources. But Feminists for Life hopes to see abortion end altogether, so inquisitors who can't quite guess Roberts' core beliefs on such issues are likely to examine hers for some clue.

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By historic standards, the Rehnquist years have been collegial, but the public arguments have grown ever fiercer in recent years. Every Justice feels entitled to pen his or her own dissent or concurring opinion to every paragraph written by the majority or the minority. It drives lower courts insane. By now, the Justices may know one another too well. Not since the 1820s has the court gone so long without getting any new blood. Of course, they know Roberts as well, though it may be his knowledge of them that proves a little unsettling. He has studied each of them closely and learned their reflexes in crafting his arguments before them. "He's more prepared than any nominee in living memory to move right in and act like he's been there for a while," notes John McGinnis, a law professor at Northwestern University in Chicago. "For a while, it's going to be like having a shadow litigator up there. He's going to be very sharp at finding the weakness of their cases."

Roberts would bring other advantages as well. At 50, he would be by far the youngest member. Only Clarence Thomas, 57, would be close, while all the rest are over 65, and John Paul Stevens is 85. Not since the mid-1980s has a Justice had such young children. "Frankly, they'll help keep him nimble because you get exposed to new concepts and new ideas, like the Internet," says Carter Phillips, another veteran of the Supreme Court bar. "Whatever the big developments are going to be, his kids are going to be right there." Many of the cases confronting the court deal not with the social issues that claim all the attention of warring interest groups but with business and commercial issues of regulation and property rights and workplace rules. There his experience with business clients would give him extra credibility, and last week the corporate wing of the Republican Party was grateful that at last the court would have a Justice who could at least speak its language if not always embrace its arguments.