By Jan Crawford Greenburg,Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON – Hailing him as one of the “best legal minds of his generation,” President Bush nominated federal appeals court Judge John Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court on Tuesday and called on the Senate to quickly send the Harvard-educated lawyer back to the marble courthouse where he has spent much of his professional life.

Roberts, who is widely considered one of the finer advocates to argue before the Supreme Court, is “a man of extraordinary accomplishment and ability” who has “profound respect for the rule of law,” Bush said, as Roberts stood by his side in a prime-time news conference in the East Room.

In introducing Roberts, 50, considered a strong conservative, Bush framed the nomination in historic terms, stressing the lasting legacy of his selection. Roberts, he said, was a person of “superb credentials and the highest integrity,” a respected judge who was easily confirmed to the Washington-based federal appeals court in 2003 after a group of 150 lawyers – including former Republican and Democratic officials – sent a letter strongly supporting him.

Roberts grew up in the northwestern Indiana lakefront town of Long Beach and worked summers in a steel mill to help pay for Harvard. He said the nomination was “both an honor and very humbling” and that his professional career, which largely consisted of arguing cases before the court, left him with a “deep regard for the court as an institution.”

“I always got a lump in my throat whenever I walked up those marble steps to argue a case before the court,” he said, with a smile, “and I don’t think it was just from the nerves.”

To replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, many analysts had predicted Bush would turn to a female or minority candidate. Some senators had urged him to pick a moderate like O’Connor, who often joined with liberals to provide the crucial fifth vote in many key areas, including abortion and affirmative action.

But with Roberts, Bush opted for a different type of historic pick: a conservative man who could change the direction of the court for decades to come. Bush made clear he was well aware Roberts would likely take a different approach than O’Connor, saying he would “strictly apply the Constitution and laws, not legislate from the bench.”

Senate Republicans and conservative organizations that have supported Bush’s judicial nominations were nearly euphoric. They said Bush had fulfilled his promise to nominate a justice in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas – both conservatives who strictly interpret the Constitution.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, called Roberts an “outstanding pick” who is “the kind of judge that all of us want – someone committed to applying the law impartially rather than legislating from the bench.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said Roberts is a “fabulous lawyer” with impeccable credentials who would be hard for Democrats to oppose.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a surge of opposition among senators. Now the outside groups – they’ve raised their money and they’re going to make a lot of charges, and we’ll have senators attempt to support those charges. But I’m hopeful that will fizzle.”

But several Democratic senators and many of those outside groups raised alarm bells Tuesday night. Emphasizing the lasting impact that Roberts’ nomination could have on American life, they called for a thorough review of his record.

“No nominee, especially a nominee who is well known to have argued ideological positions on issues important to the American people, should be confirmed without full and candid disclosure and discussion of those positions and their importance to him,” said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

Senate Democrats and outside groups will now spend the next four to six weeks, before the Senate Judiciary Committee begins hearings on Roberts’ nomination, trying to discern how Roberts would approach those issues. His work in the George H.W. Bush administration, where as deputy solicitor general he argued cases before the court, will get especially close attention. While there, he signed a brief urging for the court to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the landmark case that said a woman had a constitutional right to an abortion.

Roberts grew up near Michigan City, Ind., in the town of Long Beach, where the family had moved from Buffalo for his father’s management job at Bethlehem Steel. A high school athlete, he went to a nearby boarding school in LaPorte because the local parochial school didn’t have a football team. He was captain, a “small but slow halfback,” as he has been known to describe himself. He graduated first in his class and went off to Harvard.

He became interested in conservative politics after seeing – and not liking – anti-war sentiment on campus. Roberts encountered other things at Harvard for the first time, he has said, including students who made fun of the fact that he hailed from Indiana.

Roberts came to Washington to clerk for Chief Justice William Rehnquist after graduating at the top of his class from Harvard Law School and completing a federal appeals court clerkship for Judge Henry Friendly, who he has said is a lasting influence.

He has said he assumed he would head off to a law firm job in Chicago, but instead stayed to work in the Reagan administration

Roberts left the Bush administration to work as an appellate lawyer at the Washington law firm of Hogan & Hartson, where he represented clients before the Supreme Court. He has argued 39 cases before the high court. During his arguments, it was evident that the justices respected his intellectual strength and obvious preparation and were eager to engage him and press him on issues for his explanations of the law.

Roberts would spend a month to six weeks preparing for an argument. He would carry around a notepad in which he compiled a list of hundreds of possible questions and would work through each one to develop an answer. In one case, he developed more than 500 questions.

David Leitch, a friend and former co-worker at the law firm, said Bush had made “an absolutely first-rate nomination.”

“John Roberts is quite simply the best Supreme Court advocate of his generation, and in his time on the bench has demonstrated his skill as a member of the judiciary,” Leitch said. “Far from being an ideologue, Roberts is precisely the kind of quality person and lawyer Americans should expect to be on our highest court.”

Roberts was first nominated to the federal bench by the first President Bush in 1992, but he never made it out of the Senate Judicary Committee, which was then controlled by Democrats.

The current President Bush nominated Roberts to the bench in 2001, and he was confirmed by the Judiciary Committee 16-3 and by the full Senate in a unanimous voice vote in 2003. Richard H. Pildes, a professor at New York University who has read all of Roberts’ opinions, praised him as a judge who “writes elegantly and concisely” and that “many of his opinions have just a sentence or two with a little gleam in the eye.”

One example was in 2003, when Roberts urged the full court to rethink a three-judge panel decision that had upheld a regulation protecting toads under the federal Endangered Species Act. Roberts said there was no rationale under interstate commerce grounds for protecting the toad since it “for reasons of its own lives its entire life in California.”

“I think this is really a first-rate body of judicial work,” Pildes siad. “This is a judge, if I had a difficult and complex case, this is exactly the kind of judge I’d want to argue before.”

With just two years on the bench, Roberts does not have a long paper trail for opponents to mine. He was part of a 3-0 panel decision last week in which the appeals court sided with the Bush administration and said it could try enemy combatants in military tribunals.

Democrats are certain to argue that they should have access to his papers and memos written during his years in government service, particularly in the solicitor general’s office.

Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said he did not believe Roberts was a mainstream judge, and that his short time on the bench made thorough review critical.

“The Senate has an obligation regardless of who the nominee is to engage in a thorough and detailed review of the candidate’s record, not just his or her qualifications, but his judicial philosophy with regard to important questions facing the American people,” Henderson said.

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