Roberts is rated 'non-activist judge'

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee John Roberts gained ground Thursday in his drive for Senate confirmation. He was rated a "non-activist 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," said the 50-year-old appeals court judge, named to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

On the second day of a White House-choreographed confirmation campaign, 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 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.

Roberts' second day of courtesy calls included Sens. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Charles Schumer of New York, two of the three Democrats who opposed his nomination to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals two years ago.

Schumer said he gave 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 Roberts on Wednesday, Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Thursday, "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."

Specter, R-Pa., said 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."