As the Supreme Court ends its term this week, the nation's capital is focused on Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who has cancer and, after more than three decades on the court, may retire.

To the White House lawyers who have assembled lists of potential nominees, the 50-year-old McConnell is attractive as a strong conservative who can garner enough support from legal scholars and some Democrats to win confirmation.

There is no question, from his record and writings as a University of Chicago and University of Utah law professor, that McConnell is conservative at heart.

He worked in the White House and the Justice Department during the Reagan administration and said in 2002 he belonged to the Federalist Society, which seeks to return America to an "original" interpretation of the Constitution. He also said he was a member of the Christian Legal Society and the Evangelical Free Church of Salt Lake City.

He defended the conservative Bob Jones University when it was threatened with loss of its tax-exempt status for discriminatory practices and argued on behalf of the Boy Scouts of America when the group asked the Supreme Court to allow them to ban gays from the organization. He has supported anti-abortion protesters who obstruct access to family-planning clinics.

The leaders of several prominent liberal groups — People for the American Way, the Alliance for Justice, Americans United for Separation of Church and State — say they will urge Senate Democrats to filibuster his nomination if McConnell is selected.

On abortion — an issue that dominates Supreme Court nominations — McConnell is "a right-wing ideologue with an extensive record of vehement opposition to a woman's fundamental constitutional rights of reproductive choice and privacy," according to a statement by NARAL Pro-Choice America, the leading abortion rights group.

In 1996, McConnell joined a group of prominent anti-abortion activists and signed "a statement of pro-life principle and concern" called "The America We Seek."

"Abortion kills 1.5 million innocent human beings in America every year. There is no longer any serious scientific dispute that the unborn child is a human creature who dies violently in the act of abortion," the statement said.

The Supreme Court decision that recognized a right to abortion — Roe v. Wade — was "a gross misinterpretation of the Constitution" that "wounded American democracy," the statement said. It called for the Supreme Court to reverse itself, and for a constitutional amendment banning abortion.

In a 1998 op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal, McConnell contended that "the reasoning of Roe v. Wade is an embarrassment to those who take constitutional law seriously.