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Sen. John Cornyn turned the tables on Democrats yesterday, transforming the confirmation hearings for Judge John G. Roberts Jr. into one of the nastiest partisan conflicts the Senate Judiciary Committee has seen in recent years. Throughout the four days of hearings, Democrats called for the release of internal legal documents Judge Roberts wrote while working in the Solicitor General's Office. Republicans said those documents fall under attorney-client privilege and cannot be released. Fed up with the repeated pleas, Mr. Cornyn, Texas Republican, reminded the Democrats on the panel of their stunned outrage when some of their own internal records wound...

Having seen not a little of John Roberts’ job interview before the Senate Judiciary Committee, it isn’t difficult to come away totally disgusted. In my case, that dismay is not for what was asked, but for what was not.   There are important and legitimate questions to be asked of Judge Roberts regarding judicial philosophy that in no case would betray how he might vote on a pending case. This brief list is intended to list such questions and elaborate somewhat on why they are of particular significance.   What does Judge Roberts believe was the original purpose of the...

Using Foreign Law Is The Real Supreme Court Test By Kevin Fobbs The Supreme Court may not continue to be the supreme court of the land if the judicial philosophy of Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer of using foreign law rulings in adjudicating American cases is permitted to become standard practice by the justices. Even as the confirmation battle rages over the US Senate hearing for D.C. Federal Appeals Court Judge John Robert's bid to become the next chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, there is another more pressing battle in our nation's capitol. Unfortunately...

In our lifetime has there been a more politically poisonous Supreme Court decision than Roe v. Wade ? Set aside for a moment your thoughts on the substance of the ruling. (I happen to be a supporter of legalized abortion.) I'm talking about the continuing damage to the republic: disenfranchising, instantly and without recourse, an enormous part of the American population; preventing, as even Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said, proper political settlement of the issue by the people and their representatives; making us the only nation in the West to have legalized abortion by judicial fiat rather than by the...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 - Senate Democrats are deeply conflicted about how to vote on the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to be the nation's 17th chief justice, and appear divided about how, and whether, to use their vote to send a message to President Bush as he selects a candidate to fill a second Supreme Court vacancy. "That's a critical part of this conversation," Senator Richard J. Durbin, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat and a member of the Judiciary Committee, said Thursday, when asked if he hoped to send a message to Mr. Bush about the next nominee....

Circumspect and clever Roberts has been. No one really knows. But I predict two things: (a) Chief Justice Roberts will vote to uphold Roe vs. Wade, and (b) his replacing his former boss, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, will move the court only mildly, but most assuredly, to the left - as measured by the only available yardstick, the percent of concurrences with the opinions of those conservative touchstones, Scalia and Thomas. I infer this not just by what Roberts has said in his hearings - that he supports Griswold vs. Connecticut, that he deeply respects precedent, and that he finds...

For the past few days, and even the past weeks, I have been looking into the eyes of John Roberts. Genuine, respectful, gentle, rational, and disciplined are words that reach out to me as I have looked into those blue eyes. They appear to be the eyes of a great wise and old philosopher, a man of serious and earnest thought, who is also able to put his determined and purposeful thoughts into manageable language for the listener. May I suggest and also hope that God, or whomever, has presented this country this wonderful and good man to oversee and...

Would-be showdown lost audience By Nina J. Easton, Globe Staff | September 16, 2005 WASHINGTON -- Orrin Hatch has a new camera phone. And apparently the senior senator from Utah has become really bored. On Wednesday, the third day of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings to consider the confirmation of a chief justice to the highest court in the land, Hatch shared his new toy with the senior senator from Iowa, Charles E. Grassley. Yesterday morning, Hatch -- sitting next to the chairman's seat he once occupied -- twirled back and forth, snapping pictures of the hearing room. Meanwhile, Senator Patrick...

Arlen Specter: Welcome to Day 3 of the confirmation hearings of John Roberts. I'd like to take this opportunity to remind the nation of what a wonderful job I'm doing chairing this committee, and I'd like to let the ranking member tell me so. Patrick Leahy: Absolutely, Mr. Chairman! And let me kick off this morning's platitudes about the grandeur of our Constitution by quoting its first three words, "We the People." That means that here in America the people rule — except on issues like abortion, where their opinions don't mean spit. Specter: Very well put, Senator Leahy! And...

Looking More Moderate Than His Early Writings Roberts sees nothing 'constitutionally suspect' in a provision of the Voting Rights Act, and he also discusses affirmative action. WASHINGTON — Chief justice nominee John G. Roberts Jr. offered a fuller accounting of his views on voting rights and affirmative action Wednesday in carefully guarded testimony that provided the barest hints that he did not hew to the most conservative positions on the two sensitive issues.

WASHINGTON -- The only real question left about Supreme Court nominee John Roberts is how many Democrats will vote for him to become the nation's 17th chief justice. This week's grueling four-day Senate confirmation hearings only confirmed for most of the Senate's majority Republicans their contention that President Bush's pick to succeed William H. Rehnquist is the perfect choice. Since Democrats don't plan to filibuster, they must decide if it's worth casting a symbolic vote against the 50-year-old Roberts, knowing they can't stop his confirmation and that Bush will soon choose another conservative to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor,...

  Confirmation Analysis: A Boomerang BorkingNow that the smoke has cleared on what many forecast as the Mother of All Political Battles -- the Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings on the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court -- we can see exactly who won and who lost. Despite their initial misgivings about taking Roberts head-on, the Democrats decided to go all out in an attempt to Bork Roberts as a civil-rights Neanderthal with no heart ... and they failed miserably.For evidence of this, one need look no further than the editorial pages of the Washington Post, which notes...

During the first day of questioning at his Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court chief justice, John Roberts was asked about his religious views by Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif.

WASHINGTON — As Supreme Court nominee John Roberts left his Senate confirmation hearings Thursday, Act Two of a ritualistic process began — witnesses from special interest groups began their analyses of the chief justice candidate. "All evidence indicates that Judge Roberts would use his undeniable impressive legal skills to bring us back to a country that most of us wouldn't recognize, where states' rights trump civil rights, where the federal courts or Congress can see discrimination, but are powerless to remedy it," said Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. Complaints about Roberts' civil rights record...

The JFK QuestionSens. Specter and Feinstein impose an unconstitutional religious test.BY MANUEL MIRANDAThursday, September 15, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT They should be ashamed. We should be ashamed. We have not progressed much in 45 years it seems, and we appear to be traveling in the wrong direction. Article VI of the Constitution prohibits a religious test from being imposed on nominees to public office. The clause was motivated by the experience of Catholics in the Maryland colony and Baptists in Virginia who had been the targets of Great Britain's two Test Acts. These infamous laws of intolerance sought to prevent...

FEINGOLD: Let's go to something else then. I'd like to hear your views about the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms. This is an amendment where there's a real shortage of jurisprudence. You mentioned the Third Amendment where there's even less jurisprudence, but the Second Amendment's close. So I think you can maybe help us understand your approach to interpreting the Constitution by saying a bit about it. The Second Amendment raises interesting questions about a constitutional interpretation. I read the Second Amendment as providing an individual right to keep and bear arms as opposed to only a collective...

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of John Roberts to serve as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court began with an appropriate message from Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin to approach the task seriously. "Some have called for a 'dignified process,' " Feingold said of the confirmation process. "So have I. But at times it sounds like what some really want for the nominee is an easy process. That is not what the Constitution or the traditions of the Senate call for. If by 'dignified' they mean that tough and probing questions are out of bounds, I...

The last place I want to be is at the dentist; until I witnessed 18 senators (21 if you count those who "introduced" John Roberts at his Supreme Court confirmation hearing) posture for the cameras and special interest groups. The dentist is looking better. At least he has painkillers. There is nothing to dull the pain of pontificating senators.

RUSH: All right, to the confirmation hearings of John Roberts -- and again, folks, it's crucial, while you watch the media reveling in the president's poll numbers and awaiting breathlessly (panting) his speech tonight from Jackson Square in New Orleans, the fact is that his nominee to the Supreme Court is running rings around the best and brightest the left has to offer today and this is reshaping the judiciary, the Supreme Court, and this is the branch of government the left is most concerned about. I know they're covering the Roberts hearings but there's nothing they can do about...

As John Roberts sits down before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, its members will be searching to better understand the man who would become the 17th chief justice of the United States. If history is any guide, they will learn little about who John Roberts is and even less about who John Roberts will become. The problem with confirmation hearings is that, even with a forthcoming nominee, they offer only a snapshot of a jurist before he or she enters the rarified and mind-altering world of the country's highest court.