The Nominee As a Young Pragmatist

WashComPost ^ | July 22, 2005 | Jo Becker and Amy Argetsinger

[hipaatwo]

As an up-and-coming young lawyer in the White House counsel's office from 1982 to 1986, John G. Roberts Jr. weighed in on some of the most controversial issues facing the Reagan administration, balancing conservative ideology with a savvy political pragmatism and a confidence that belied his years.

Asked to review legislation that would have prohibited lower federal courts from ordering busing to desegregate public schools, Roberts, now President Bush's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, took on no less a conservative legal scholar than Theodore B. Olson, who at the time was an assistant attorney general and later served as the solicitor general under Bush.

Olson had argued that based on his reading of case law, Congress could not flatly prohibit the busing of children to achieve racial balance in public schools. That argument did not impress Roberts, who was two weeks past his 29th birthday.

"I do not agree," Roberts wrote to White House counsel Fred F. Fielding in a memo dated Feb. 15, 1984. Congress has the authority "and can conclude -- the evidence supports this -- that busing promotes segregation rather than remedying it, by precipitating white flight."

[hipaatwo]

The post went the the Reagan Library to dig up Roberts writings.

[nwrep]

This is the best and most informative article yet on Judge Roberts. It shows him to be not only a restrained constitutionalist, but a highly partisan Republican. GREAT pick by Bush.