Who is Judge Roberts?

Roberts’ record as an official in the Reagan White House and Justice Department, as deputy solicitor general in the administration of the elder George Bush, as a corporate lawyer and partner in the blue-chip Washington firm of Hogan & Hartson, and, for the past two years, as a judge on the US District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia defines him as a figure with high-level connections in both the state apparatus and the corporate world.

That Roberts is a man of considerable legal ability and political substance is further underscored by his earlier history. He graduated with honors from Harvard Law School, where he was managing editor of the Harvard Law Review, and quickly began his ascent within both Republican and judicial circles by serving as a clerk for then-Supreme Court Associate Justice William Rehnquist. He solidified his conservative Republican credentials by becoming an active member of the Federalist Society, the major organization of right-wing lawyers that today provides the recruitment pool for most federal judges.

While he argued before the Supreme Court, as a lawyer for the senior Bush administration, that the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion should be overturned, his brand of right-wing politics is more focused on expanding the police powers of the federal government, curtailing civil liberties, and limiting the powers of the federal government to regulate business and enforce social protections than on the “hot-button” issues of abortion and school prayer so dear to the Christian right.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2005/jul2005/robe-j21.shtml