SUPREME COURT Stevens, O'Connor present favorable views of nominee

Justice O'Connor said she is impressed with Roberts' scholarship and skills.
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON -- Justice John Paul Stevens is widely regarded as one of the most liberal members of the Supreme Court and regularly spars with conservative Antonin Scalia.
But when he approached an old acquaintance at the American Bar Association's annual meeting in Chicago last month, he was upbeat about President Bush's selection of another cerebral conservative, John G. Roberts Jr., for the court.
"Isn't it great news?" Justice Stevens, 85, said, according to the acquaintance, who asked not to be named because it was a private conversation.
Roberts was still a nominee for associate justice at the time, but Justice Stevens' attitude toward him illustrates an advantage he would bring to the role of chief justice -- a role he is all but certain to play after his four days of hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.
Familiar figure
Roberts is a former law clerk and close friend of the man he would replace, the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and he is a veteran of 39 oral arguments before the court.
That makes him a known quantity to all eight justices, a person they understand to be familiar with the personal relationships and bureaucratic rhythms that have grown up over the past 11 years of unchanging membership at the court.
"I have watched Judge Roberts since he has been an advocate before our court," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said in July, when Roberts was originally slated to replace her when she retired. "And I and my colleagues have been enormously impressed with his scholarship and his skills."
Roberts will need all of those skills, once the Senate completes work on his nomination this month, as he tries to fashion majorities -- and to guide a comfortable-in-its-ways group of jurists through a transitional period.
At 50, Roberts would be considerably younger than the colleagues he leads (Clarence Thomas, 57, is the only current justice younger than 65). He has already heard suggestions from members of the Judiciary Committee for such innovations as television cameras at oral arguments, and has floated his own notions that the court might be able to increase its caseload while publishing fewer dissenting and concurring opinions.
Relations with Congress
Equally important, Roberts must represent the federal judiciary in its relations with Congress, which have been difficult in recent years.
Lawmakers from both parties have expressed frustration on subjects ranging from the court's striking down of popular statutes to the judiciary's reported failure to enforce rules of conduct among its own members. Those tensions have resulted in a number of GOP proposals in Congress to limit the courts' jurisdiction over such issues as same-sex marriage and the Pledge of Allegiance.
Armed with little more than the persuasive authority of his office, Roberts will have to defend judicial independence without alienating the lawmakers who supply the $6 billion annual budget that fuels the federal court system and its 30,000 employees.
Respecting Rehnquist
"Chief Justice Rehnquist realized a chief justice's political capital does not go very far, and you can use it up pretty quickly," said Russell Wheeler, a guest scholar in the governance studies program at the Brookings Institution.
At last week's hearings, Roberts promised continuity with Chief Justice Rehnquist's crisp management of the court's internal deliberations, known as the conference.
Roberts noted that, under Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone in the 1940s, the meetings were "disasters," because he would "critique" each justice's views in turn, so that "the conferences went on for days, and everyone ended up hating each other." The clear implication was that Roberts would follow Chief Justice Rehnquist's custom: Each justice speaks once before any other any justice may speak for a second time.