Senate panel endorses Roberts
WASHINGTON – Chief Justice nominee John Roberts Jr. won the Senate Judiciary Committee’s endorsement Thursday with unanimous Republican support and the backing of three Democrats who said they hope he will keep his promise not to be an ideologue.
The 13-5 vote reflected Roberts’ widely praised performance at last week’s hearing and the Democrats’ inability or unwillingness to mount a united campaign against him. While Republicans and Democrats agreed that President Bush’s next Supreme Court nomination will be far more contentious, liberal activists clearly saw Thursday’s vote for the conservative Roberts as a blow to their efforts to maintain a voice in shaping the judiciary.
Roberts, 50, would replace the late William Rehnquist, a reliable conservative vote on the high court. Perhaps as early as next week, Bush will nominate a replacement for retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a centrist. Her successor could play a major role in pushing the court to the left or right.
The soothing tones and anticlimactic windup of Roberts’ confirmation are unlikely to be repeated in the looming battle to replace O’Connor, an array of lawmakers and activists said. “It’s Armageddon,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a Judiciary Committee member who strongly backed Roberts.
The full Senate plans to vote on Roberts’ nomination next week, when he is all but assured of being confirmed as the nation’s 17th chief justice.
The three committee Democrats who voted for Roberts – Russell Feingold and Herbert Kohl of Wisconsin and Patrick Leahy of Vermont – have liberal voting records, and their votes dismayed many groups important to the party’s base.
“Today was a defeat, there’s no question about that,” said Ralph Neas of the liberal People for the American Way.
Nan Aron of the Alliance for Justice called the committee vote “deeply disappointing” but added, “We expect the next nomination to ignite a firestorm of opposition. … We’ve just begun to fight.”
Roberts’ supporters praised his intellect, knowledge and cautious answers that avoided suggesting how he might vote on issues that could come before the court. The five Democrats who opposed him said he dodged too many questions, and they faulted the Bush administration for refusing to provide documents from Roberts’ highest-ranking job in government: deputy solicitor general.
All they were left with, they said, were memos that Roberts wrote as a government lawyer in the 1980s, when he questioned, among other things, the “so-called right to privacy.” A woman’s right to privacy is the legal underpinning for the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion ruling.
“I knew as little about what Judge Roberts really thought after the hearings as I did before the hearings,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who voted against him.