WASHINGTON – Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito’s largely technical responses to questions on contentious legal issues such as abortion and about his ethical judgment and past professional associations deflated Democratic hopes that they could put the veteran jurist on the defensive.

His Republican supporters, meanwhile, were emboldened to predict that one of the most hyped hearings in memory will turn out to be a dud.

Democrats staked out an aggressive questioning strategy in opening statements Monday, threatening to challenge a 1985 job application in which Judge Alito expressed personal opposition to the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade, criticized the decisions of the Warren Court, and cited his membership in a conservative student group at Princeton University that at least two prominent elected officials have long since renounced as racist.

Yesterday, Judge Alito’s acknowledgement of a right to privacy in the U.S. Constitution; of limits on presidential power; his explanation of the detailed process he employs to honor ethical standards, and his recollection that he joined the group Concerned Alumni of Princeton as a way of defending the military against student radicals drove most reporters, activists, and even senators out of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room by mid-afternoon.

“He’s been pretty amazing so far, and absent an unforced error, he’s going to come out just fine,” a former associate White House counsel under President Bush, Reginald Brown, said. “The challenge for the Democrats now will be maintaining the energy of the opposition. And I don’t think they are going to be able to do that. They certainly didn’t get any traction today.”

Abortion came up early, with the committee’s Republican chairman, Senator Specter, pressing Judge Alito on whether he thinks Americans have become too reliant on abortion to reconsider its legality. Judge Alito called reliance “an important foundation” of the doctrine of stare decisis, or the notion that courts should let previous decisions stand. He cited cases in which he upheld abortion rights as proof that he does not bring “an agenda” to the bench, but also said that stare decisis is “not an inexorable command.”

Senator Schumer picked up on this allowance during fierce questioning late in the day.

The Democrat of New York produced a series of placards featuring quotes from previous nominees who had expressed fidelity to stare decisis before the Judiciary Committee but who poked holes in the theory later on. Mr. Schumer’s point, he said, was that a pledge of support for the theory is no indication of how judges will use it on the bench. He cited, in particular, his fear that Judge Alito would not respect the precedents concerning abortion.

“We can only conclude that if the question came before you,” Mr. Schumer said, “it is very likely that you would vote to overrule Roe v. Wade.”

Democrats sought to disarm Judge Alito on five fronts: his views on presidential power, his judicial decisions on race, his statement of conservative principles on a 1985 application for a job in the Reagan administration, his association with Concerned Alumni of Princeton, and his participation in a case involving a mutual fund company about which he had earlier pledged not to hear cases. Republicans anticipated all of the attacks in questions to the nominee aimed at teasing out favorable responses on the issues.

If Republicans did prepare a defense for Judge Alito, the veteran judge did not make much of an effort to appear overly cozy with his supporters. Asked by Senator Feingold, a Democrat of Wisconsin, whether he had been coached by White House officials on how to answer questions about executive power, Judge Alito said he had not been told how to answer a single question and that he would have been offended by any suggestion of the kind.

“It would be very inappropriate for them to tell me what I should say,” Judge Alito said. “And I wouldn’t have been receptive to that sort of advice.”

By mid-afternoon, reporters and senators had begun to file out of the hearing room. Mr. Specter, acknowledging the low level of engagement, allowed a brief interruption in the order of questions, saying, “It livens up the afternoon.” Senator Leahy, a Democrat of Vermont, added, “The chairman was disturbed by my snoring over here.”

On the issue of presidential authority, Judge Alito said the president’s power is limited. He said, “No one in this country is above the law, and that includes the president and the Supreme Court.” He said the most solemn duty of a president is to “take care that the law is faithfully executed.”

On the issue of the 1985 job application in which he said that abortion was not protected by the Constitution, Judge Alito said the statement was “a correct statement of what I thought in 1985.” He added that if confirmed for the court he would approach the abortion issue “with an open mind.”

On the issue of judicial philosophy, Judge Alito repeatedly said that judges have a limited role to play, and that his custom is to decide a case on the narrowest grounds available to him. Asked if he was a “strict constructionist,” he said: “Well, if a strict constructionist is a judge who doesn’t make things up, then I’m a strict constructionist.”

Republicans said they are hopeful that the course of the hearing so far suggested an easy path to confirmation. They said they do not expect Judge Alito to get the 22 Democratic votes that Chief Justice Roberts tallied in September, but that they do not see a controversy on the horizon that could be used to justify a filibuster.

“We don’t have any sense that the Democrats are going to produce anything different than they did today,” a lawyer close to the White House said. “There could be something out there, but we don’t have any indication of what that would be.”