McConnell spoke out against the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and criticized the reasoning behind the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, which made George W. Bush president in 2001. He has written, in the Harvard Law Review, that a public hospital may not forbid doctors from performing abortions on its premises.

When a group of gay and straight students at a Salt Lake City high school met administrative resistance when they tried to form an extracurricular club that would meet on school property, McConnell supported the students — just as he had defended Christian students in Washington state who wanted to meet after school in an empty classroom as a Bible study group.

In a 1992 law review article, he criticized a Supreme Court decision on government Christmas displays. He noted how the court struck down a display that featured only Christian symbols, but upheld another display in which a nativity scene was surrounded by Santa Claus and other secular symbols.

"The court appears to have arrived at the worst of all possible outcomes. It would be better to forbid the government to have religious symbols at all than to require that they be festooned with the trappings of modern American materialism," he wrote. "If there are to be religious symbols, they should be treated with respect. To allow them only under the conditions approved by the court makes everyone the loser."

The move to Utah

The Kentucky-born judge received a bachelor's degree from Michigan State University and his law degree from the University of Chicago in 1979. He clerked for two liberal icons on the federal bench — Circuit Court Judge J. Skelly Wright and Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan — before working in the Reagan administration and then becoming a law professor at the University of Chicago.

In 1996, he pulled up stakes and moved to the University of Utah as a professor.

Troy Eid, former legal counsel to Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and a student of McConnell's at the University of Chicago, said McConnell's move to Utah was a prescient change of venue.

McConnell, Eid said, had no connection to Utah but moved there to find a political climate more favorable to his aspirations of becoming a federal appeals court judge. "He did a very bold thing," said Eid.

Eid said the political landscape in Utah, decidedly more conservative than that in the Chicago area, was more amenable to McConnell's scholarship. Hatch quickly became an ally and got behind McConnell's nomination to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico and Wyoming.

McConnell, who has argued 11 cases before the Supreme Court and won nine of them, received the American Bar Association's highest rating as a nominee and was confirmed without objection.