Roberts To Face ‘Piercing Questions’

WASHINGTON – The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday urged that there be an efficient confirmation hearing on President Bush’s nominee for chief justice of the United States, Judge John Roberts Jr. At the same time, the chairman, Senator Specter of Pennsylvania, predicted that he and other committee members would press the nominee with “piercing questions” in connection with the thousands of pages of his writings that senators have been poring over for weeks.Chief Justice Rehnquist died on Saturday, just two days before a hearing was scheduled to begin on the nomination of Judge Roberts to replace Justice O’Connor. The president’s decision to change Roberts nomination to a nod for the post of chief justice has left another Supreme Court vacancy to fill.Rehnquist’s death, coming as it did in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, added to the sense here of cascading, troubling events. It has also put senators who were mixing for a fight over Judge Roberts in the position of not wanting to appear overly partisan at a time of national crisis, even as they argue that the president has raised the stakes in the battle over the balance of the Supreme Court by nominating Judge Roberts as its chief.“A lot of events have happened on the national scene over the last week that are tragic in many ways,” the Senate’s majority leader, Senator Frist, said yesterday. “And we are appropriately adjusting the U.S. Senate’s schedule in order to pay the appropriate respect for the former chief justice and to respond aggressively, with action … to the catastrophe and the natural disaster that is ongoing along the Gulf Coast.”According to the new schedule outlined by Mr. Specter, the hearing for Judge Roberts will begin at noon on Monday and could end next Friday. Mr. Specter said he has reached a good-faith agreement with the highest-ranking Democrat on the committee, Senator Leahy of Vermont, under which none of the 19 senators on the committee will extend the hearing by another week.Assuming committee members abide by the rules, Mr. Specter said he expects to report a vote on the nominee out of committee no later than September 22. The full Senate would take up the vote for consideration four days later and complete floor action by September 30. If confirmed, Judge Roberts will join a full court when it returns to session October 3. Justice O’Connor reiterated that she intends to remain on the bench until a replacement for her is confirmed.Some Democrats on the committee, including Senator Schumer, renewed calls yesterday for the Bush administration to release documents related to Judge Roberts’s time in the solicitor general’s office. Mr. Specter responded by defending the administration’s position that freeing up the documents would cause lawyers who expect similar scrutiny in the future to be less candid in their writings. He said Judge Roberts has already written extensively on a variety of issues, from privacy rights to affirmative action, exposing himself to intense questioning.Looking ahead to a replacement nominee for Justice O’Connor, speculation began to swirl yesterday around a Republican senator of Florida, Mel Martinez, a Cuban refugee and former head of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Mr. Martinez is thought to be a strong candidate because of his background and his conservative social views.People familiar with White House strategy said the president could make a surprise decision, as he did with Judge Roberts. Many predicted Mr. Bush would choose a woman or a minority to replace Justice O’Connor. Still, Mr. Bush has said he would like to nominate the first Latino to the court. One possibility is the U.S. attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, whose nomination could prompt a backlash from conservatives, who say Mr. Gonzales is not sufficiently conservative.Other potential replacements include three female judges on the Fifth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals – Edith Clement, Edith Jones, and Priscilla Owen – and several other federal appeals court judges, including the Fourth Circuit’s J. Michael Luttig and J. Harvie Wilkinson and the Tenth Circuit’s Michael McConnell. A non-judge whose name has also emerged is Larry Thompson, a deputy U.S. attorney general during Mr. Bush’s first term.Mr. Bush told reporters yesterday that the list of candidates to replace Justice O’Connor is “wide open,” noting with a laugh that this characterization, along with the fact that he glanced at Mr. Gonzales as he said it, would only fuel speculation. Mr. Bush indicated that he will wait until after the hearing on Judge Roberts before nominating someone to fill the second open seat.“I want the Senate to focus not on who the next nominee is going to be, but the nominee I’ve got up there now,” Mr. Bush said. “And it’s important for the country that they complete their work. And in the meantime, the country can be assured that I’ll take a good, long look at who should replace Justice O’Connor.”

Roberts To Face ‘Piercing Questions’

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