WASHINGTON – Supreme Court nominee John Roberts gained ground yesterday in his drive for Senate confirmation. He was rated a “nonactivist judge, which everyone is looking for,” by the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was praised by several centrist Democrats.

“I’m enjoying my visits here in the Senate very much,” the 50-year-old appeals court judge, named to succeed Justice O’Connor, said.

On the second day of a White House-choreographed confirmation campaign, Judge Roberts had yet to draw the public opposition of a single Senate Democrat. Talk of a filibuster and partisan political brawl over the first Supreme Court vacancy in 11 years was nonexistent.

Democrats intend to use confirmation hearings later this summer to question Judge Roberts on his views on abortion, the overturning of court precedent, invalidating acts of Congress, and more. A separate struggle awaits if, as expected, they seek access to internal Justice Department memos from his days as a government attorney.

Judge Roberts’s second day of courtesy calls included Senators Kennedy of Massachusetts and Schumer of New York, two of the three Democrats who opposed his nomination to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals two years ago.

Mr. Schumer said he gave Judge Roberts a list of more than 70 questions and told him to “be prepared to answer them in the best way he can” when the hearings begin.

Some were broadly written, such as, “Is it appropriate for the Supreme Court to overturn a well-settled precedent, upon which Americans have come to rely?”

Others sought the nominee’s opinion about well-known and controversial decisions of the past, such as, “Do you believe that Roe v. Wade … was correctly decided? What is your view of the quality of the legal reasoning in that case? Do you believe that it reached the right result?” Roe v. Wade is the landmark 1973 case that established a woman’s right to an abortion.

After spending an hour with Judge Roberts on Wednesday, Senator Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said yesterday, “I think we have a man, I would interpret it, who is a non-activist judge, which everybody is looking for. Both sides are looking for a non-activist judge.”

Mr. Specter, a Republican of Pennsylvania, said Judge Roberts had told him he didn’t prefer labels such as liberal or conservative and “his view was that the court ought to be modest…. The other word which he used, which I thought was important, was an emphasis on stability. When you talk about a modest approach by a court and an approach on stability, I think you have critical ingredients of a judge who would be non-activist.” Mr. Specter’s remarks suggested he did not believe Judge Roberts would inject personal views into his judicial rulings, a comment of potential political significance coming from a senior Republican who has long supported abortion rights.

While Senate Democrats generally have declined to express positions on Judge Roberts’s nomination, there were expressions of praise from some among the group involved in this spring’s compromise.

Senator Nelson, a Democrat of Nebraska, said Mr. Bush had made a “wise choice.”Said Senator Pryor of Arkansas, “So far, so good.” Some abortion rights organizations have announced their opposition, expressing fears that Judge Roberts will become part of a court majority that first erodes and eventually overturns the historic 1973 ruling.

NARAL Pro-Choice America has cited a legal brief he co-authored for a Supreme Court case while serving as deputy solicitor general in the administration of the first President Bush. “Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled,” it said in part.

Asked about the legal filing, Judge Roberts told senators during 2003 confirmation hearings to his current post that he would be guided by legal precedent. “Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land. … There is nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent,” he said at the time.