Roberts awaits hearings for Supreme Court

By Tom Strode - Jul 29, 2005

The U.S. Senate will begin hearings on John Roberts, President Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Sept. 6.

Bush nominated Roberts July 19 as the replacement for Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who retired July 1 after 24 years of service. After serving in both government and private practice, Roberts, 50, has been on the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals since 2003. Prior to becoming a judge, he had argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court.

Pro-life and abortion rights advocates have split over the nominee, even though they have no ruling to base their positions on. In his two years on the appeals court, Roberts has yet to rule in an abortion case.

For pro-lifers, their support of his confirmation appears largely a matter of his view of the Constitution. Even without a commitment by Roberts on Roe v. Wade, they appear content to trust his judicial philosophy, which seems to be based on operating within the constraints of the Constitution. Abortion rights advocates fear Roberts, as a justice unbound by precedent, will vote to overturn the 1973 opinion legalizing abortion.

“President Bush promised in 2000 and again in 2004 that he would nominate only strict-constructionist, original-intent judges and justices in the Scalia-Thomas mold,” said Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “I have found the President in the 17 years I have known him personally to be a man of integrity and a man of his word. I will trust the President until I have compelling evidence to the contrary.

“The nomination of Judge Roberts has certainly not given me any reason at present to believe that the President has done anything other than to fulfill his campaign promises,” Land said. “Justice-nominee Roberts gives every indication of being the kind of judge that will be a neutral judicial umpire, calling them the way the Constitution sees them, not seeking to ‘fix’ the game by tilting judicial decisions toward those who do not offend his personal sense of right and wrong.”

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