Yesterday, President Bush announced his intention to designate Kevin J. Martin of North Carolina as the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The president chose wisely.

For the past four years, Mr. Bush has relied on Michael Powell as chairman of the FCC. He served well. Now it is Mr. Martin’s turn to undertake this enormous responsibility.

Mr. Martin is extraordinarily qualified to assume the chairmanship. For more than 10 years, he has worked on telecommunications legal issues both in the private and public sectors. For the past four years, Mr. Martin has been a commissioner of the FCC.

Previously, he was deputy general counsel for the Bush 2000 campaign and helped extensively with the transition of the Bush administration in early 2001. Every action Mr. Martin takes is with the intention of helping the president. Mr. Bush both shaped, and now elevated, Mr. Martin’s career.

I first met Kevin Martin nearly 8 years ago. I had been nominated to be a Republican commissioner on the FCC. I was looking for a staff of bright lawyers to write legally impeccable dissents to help buttress appeals of potentially unlawful FCC orders. Unfortunately, I would often need to call on the talents of such lawyers.

Mr. Martin was bright, engaging, and infectiously cheerful. I hired him.

Mr. Martin wrote one of my first speeches as a commissioner. It was filled with a rhetoric rooted in profound fealty to the law. I remember one phrase in particular:

“Well, let me tell you, you are being hoodwinked left and right on this universal service fund, and it’s time that you stood up and told the FCC to start following the law, not reinventing it.”

Mr. Martin’s speech – certainly not my delivery of it – received a standing ovation.

A month later, largely in response to Mr. Martin’s extraordinary work on several rural issues, the senator who had been most skeptical about my nomination to the FCC issued a public statement saying he had been wrong ever to doubt me. The senator was perhaps not mistaken to doubt me, but he would be wrong to doubt Mr. Martin.

Over the next several years, courts reversed many unlawful FCC orders, based in part on the dissents crafted by Mr. Martin and other skilled lawyers.

Mr. Martin’s legal philosophy was and probably still is based on a strict adherence to law, doubt about economic regulation, and trust in the dispersion of government. These are themes perhaps most forcefully propounded by Milton Friedman more than 40 years ago in “Capitalism and Freedom.”

Mr. Martin will be mindful of the law. Having drafted many reasoned dissents upheld by courts, he understands what the law permits, and does not permit, the FCC to do. He understands how excessive regulation can harm American businesses and consumers. He has seen how uncertainty about federal rules can paralyze an industry to the benefit of no one.

Mr. Martin is above all else fair-minded. In part because Mr. Martin will tolerate dissent and will listen to all sides of an argument, he will have the respect and trust of his colleagues at the FCC. In turn, members of Congress, the administration, and the public at large will support him.

Chairmanship of the FCC is not an easy job. It is highly visible and frequently attacked. And it is focus of much second-guessing and advice-giving.

Mr. Martin will receive much advice over the next several weeks about how to be chairman of the FCC. Much of that advice will focus on one policy versus another: broadband versus old wireline; licensed spectrum versus unlicensed; the First Amendment versus indecency, and so on.

Mr. Martin will doubtless listen cheerfully as he always does. I do not know what his policies will be. I trust that he will choose wisely. He will argue humbly and persuasively for his preferred policies not because he has a monopoly on good ideas, but precisely because he does not. He will lead the FCC toward rules that will survive court challenges. In turn, at long last, communications markets will have greater certainty about legal rights. That is all we can ask of the next chairman of the FCC.

A former FCC commissioner,Mr. Furchtgott-Roth is president of Furchtgott-Roth Economic Enterprises. He can be reached at hfr@furchtgott-roth.com.