That membership alone will raise the hackles of dubious luminaries like Vermont's Sen. Patrick Leahy, who regards even the departing Sandra O'Connor as a judicial activist against the ideology that drives him. Blend in other senators who want to make each confirmation process a referendum on Roe v. Wade, and the spectacle to come may not prove particularly pretty.
It needn't be that way, and perhaps it won't.
In 1981 former Texas Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Jordan responded this way to President Reagan's nomination of Sandra O'Connor: "I don't know the lady, but if she's a good lawyer and believes in the Constitution, she'll be all right." Sixteen years later California's Senator Barbara Boxer said regarding judicial nominations, "It is not the role of the Senate to obstruct the process and prevent numbers of highly qualified nominees from even being given the opportunity for a vote on the Senate floor."
Despite the rightness of those expressions, we're likely in for brawling and mauling. Sen. Boxer may have given the game away when she famously altered her view - and in the name of leftist solidarity or something has supported just about every recent Democratic filibuster of Bush appellate nominees.
Over the years since the nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, a cottage industry has been building whose sole purpose is to oppose principled nominees to the federal courts, notably the Supreme Court. Only now have its myrmidons really begun vetting the Roberts record for supposedly crippling deviations from ideological norms.
Gerald Ford nominated John Paul Stevens, Ronald Reagan nominated O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, Bush I nominated David Souter - none distinguished by strict constructionism. In Roberts, Bush fils has reached seemingly to a solider sort.
Bill Clinton nominated two liberals (Ruth Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer) to replace liberal Harry Blackmun and conservative Byron White. President Bush is no less entitled to nominate individuals conforming to his own philosophy. John Roberts deserves confirmation - and he represents only a beginning.
Robert Bork failed famously to win confirmation to the Supreme Court. Recently he noted, regarding an institution that has fallen far from right reason:
To restore the court's integrity will require a minimum of three appointments of men and women who have so firm an understanding of the judicial function that they will not drift left once on the bench. Choosing, and fighting for, the right man or woman to replace Justice O'Connor is the place to start. That will be difficult, but the stakes are the legitimate scope of self-government and an end to judicially imposed moral disorder.