Prayers for Roberts

Progressive, The, Sept, 2005

Roberts's work for the Bush campaign came free of charge.

In between serving his Republican masters, Roberts worked at Hogan & Hartson in Washington, where he represented one corporate interest after another.

"In John G. Roberts Jr., many of the corporate chieftains who helped put President Bush in the White House see a Supreme Court nominee with whom they can do business," wrote Paul Adams of the Baltimore Sun. "That's partly because many of them have already."

While Roberts has been on both sides of some business issues, as he argued against Microsoft in one instance and against developers in Lake Tahoe in another, almost all of his work was in defense of corporate interests.

He represented mining companies in at least two cases: one, defending their practice of mountaintop removal, and the other, supporting their effort to slap criminal contempt fines on striking workers.

He also represented Toyota in a 2002 case that he won at the Supreme Court, which decided to limit the scope of the ADA, making it much more difficult for persons with disabilities to seek redress.

And Roberts argued two cases for the state of Alaska against the rights of Native Americans. "In two landmark cases, Roberts has argued that the rights of the state of Alaska supercede the sovereignty and subsistence rights guaranteed to Native peoples by the federal government," said Luci Beach, a member of the steering committee of the Gwich'in tribe.

Roberts is a member of the National Legal Center for the Public Interest, whose mission statement stresses its commitment to "free enterprise," "private ownership of property," "limited government," and a "balanced use of private and public resources." He also has been active in the Republican National Lawyers Association. And, while he denied being a member of the Federalist Society, it turned out that he was listed in a Federalist Society directory as being on its Washington Lawyers Steering Committee. Roberts spoke before the Federalist Society as recently as October 30, 2003.

(As an aside, Vice President Dick Cheney praised Roberts in a speech at the Federalist Society on November 15, 2001, when Roberts was up for appellate judge. Cheney also joked--or it was his idea of a joke--that he was appearing at the Federalist Society as "your token nonlawyer. Not that I have anything against lawyers. Looking around the room, I'd guess that a year ago, about half of you were down in Florida.")

Some liberals and progressives are secretly sighing could have been worse. That's slim solace. Kind of like preferring Orrin Hatch to Jesse Helms.

But there is a remote chance that Roberts, if confirmed, will not turn out to be God's gift to the right.

One glimmer of hope is the role Roberts played, while at Hogan & Hartson, in the 1996 Romer v. Evans case. Roberts joined other members of the firm in giving pro bono legal advice to the plaintiffs, who ultimately succeeded in overturning a homophobic provision of the Colorado constitution that had denied civil rights protections to gays. Roberts was brought in specifically to prep the plaintiffs' team in how to address the moderate and conservative justices.