Roberts gets top U.S. judicial post

Confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court have long focused on a nominee's view of individual rights, above all the right to privacy. But we are suddenly in the midst of a major shift. The real importance of the Roberts hearings, and a harbinger of things to come, is that the senators focused less on individual rights than on the court's attitude toward Congress and its prerogatives. This was a dramatic change from the emphasis in the senators' questioning of the last six nominees, going all the way back to Robert Bork in 1987. Indeed, for the first time since the 1930s, prominent legislators are concerned about the suddenly tense relationship between the federal judiciary and Congress.

Increasingly, lawmakers from both parties worry that the Supreme Court is restricting their authority -- that "strict construction" of the Constitution might make it more difficult for Congress to protect civil rights, safeguard the environment and prevent crime. At the same time, however, some legislators actually want the court to place further limits on the power of elected officials. These lawmakers want the court to protect property rights, to insist on states' rights, and to invalidate affirmative action programs and gun control legislation. Within the Republican Party itself, an intense debate is brewing on how to evaluate a more conservative court that seems more than willing to limit Congress's powers -- and on whether this assertiveness constitutes the kind of judicial activism that the party has long derided.

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