IU professors weigh in on Court nominee

While political partisans across the nation weigh in on President George W. Bush's nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, two IU law professors have a more personal view of John Roberts. Professor Joseph Hoffmann describes Roberts as "a good legal mind and a good person." Professor Craig Bradley has similar opinions.\n"I gather that he is well liked in Washington," Bradley said. "He certainly doesn't come across as an extremely political person or a right-wing firebrand."\nBoth Hoffmann and Bradley are former clerks for current Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, as is Roberts. The two professors said they have met Roberts on several \noccasions at the annual reunions for former and current law clerks for the judge. \nBradley said Roberts, who grew up in northern Indiana, is widely known to be a conservative but has a feeling that he will likely mitigate some of his conservative opinions.\n"I expect him to be a conservative in the tradition of a conservative who respects precedents and the rule of law," he said.\nBut Hoffmann cautioned against making predictions about what sorts of decisions Roberts will make as a justice, if he is confirmed by the Senate.\nHe said people often judge Supreme Court nominees too closely by their rulings in lower courts. Roberts, who is currently a federal appeals court judge, often had his hands tied in rulings because he had to stick with U.S. Supreme Court precedent. \n"When the Supreme Court has just been active in an area, lower court judges generally are not free to say what they want," he said.\nInitial indications are that Roberts will be more conservative than Sandra Day O'Connor, the justice he was nominated to replace. But the odds are against any predictions about how Roberts will rule on the bench, if confirmed, Hoffmann said.\nAnd though the confirmation battle in the Senate over Roberts will likely be fierce, Hoffmann said he thinks that Roberts will be confirmed.\n"I suspect that there is going to be a political fight over this," he said. "Not necessarily because of who he is personally, but because of who he is \nreplacing."\nThere is a lot at stake since Roberts would have the power to break the five-to-four majority on many major issues for which O'Connor was the key swing vote. \nBut Law Professor Charlie Geyh, who studies Constitutional law, said Roberts will likely ultimately get through.\n"I think that Bush has made a pretty smart pick in the sense that he has chosen someone whose credentials are pretty clearly above reproach," he said. \nSince Roberts has not made many rulings on truly divisive issues which liberals could rally behind to block his confirmations, Geyh called him "bulletproof."\nBut beyond any partisan mudslinging over his Senate confirmation, Bradley still remembers Roberts when he first met him as a 27-year-old law clerk for Rehnquist.\n"He certainly struck me as a bright guy," he said. "And his subsequent career has provided him terrific qualifications for being a Supreme Court justice"