Despite robust endorsements by liberal and conservative lawyers of the intellect and scholarly nature of President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, U.S. senators are duty-bound to pry into the thinking that makes Judge John G. Roberts Jr. tick.
President Bush's right to fill a high-court vacancy through powers granted by Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution also has a companion requirement—that it be done with the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate.
Any person accepting an appointment for life to the high court surely should have no reservations about sharing viewpoints that could lead to court rulings reshaping American society and the rights of its citizens.
Presidential assurances of Judge Roberts' fitness are not enough. Memories are still fresh of the president's counterfeit claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that led to the Senate's vote supporting war on those grounds. Senators now are more inclined to be certain before casting their votes in support of representations made by President Bush.
Furthermore, the White House only creates mystery and doubt, and raises questions about Judge Roberts, by balking at Senate requests for documents from the nominee's service for four years as deputy solicitor general for the first President Bush.
The nation's highest court belongs to and serves every American, not merely the ideological tastes of a single president or a political party at a moment in the history of the nation.
Justices with lifetime power must be open books if the public is to maintain trust in men and women with such awesome power over their lives.
