Roberts justice

WHO IS John Roberts? The question has conservative and liberal politicians, as well the news media, analyzing every available word the Supreme Court nominee has put to paper in the last 20 years. But the answer isn't there, and what emerges is a frustratingly sketchy, sometimes contradictory, portrait.

Part of the problem is that the Bush administration has refused to release all the papers, most notably the memos and files from Roberts's tenure as principal deputy solicitor general from 1989 to 1993.

Another obstacle is Roberts's career, which has flourished in the back offices of power and in private law practice -- jobs that required him to articulate the views of an administration, or the interests of clients, rather than speak his own mind. His two years on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia are hardly enough to provide insight into a judicial philosophy.

A third distraction is the impatient American psyche, with its penchant for putting instant labels on people and giving them the thumbs-up or thumbs-down. The thumbs are working overtime with Roberts, sometimes changing directions in midanalysis.

Environmental groups picking through his enigmatic paper trail have declared him both friend and foe -- friend for working pro bono to defend a development ban on the shores of Lake Tahoe, and foe for writing an amicus brief for the mining industry that supported mountaintop removal in West Virginia.

Conservatives have cheered his Reagan administration credentials and his 1985 memo defending school prayer but have booed his assistance to gay rights activists successfully pressing for protections against discrimination before the Supreme Court.

In an atmosphere rivaling a presidential election, conservative and liberal groups have talked of spending millions in advertising, pro and con, leading up to Roberts's Senate confirmation hearing, beginning Sept. 6.

So zealous was NARAL Pro-Choice America in seeking to brand Roberts with the antiabortion label that it sponsored a TV ad grossly distorting his involvement in a case concerning abortion clinic protestors. NARAL pulled the ad last week.

What Roberts deserves is a firm neutral from open minds willing to suspend instant judgments and hear him out -- not in hazy recollections of colleagues, not in bits and pieces from memos written by a man in his 20s, but from his presumably articulate 50-year-old self in the Senate hearing room next month.

And what a listening America deserves is honest, clear, and thorough answers from a man who has sent the country on a confounding paper chase.