SCOTUS Nominee Has "Cloaked His Views" for Decades

A good analysis from the Boston Globe. Perhaps the New York Times read this analysis, as their piece, earlier titled

"Roberts an early ally of judicial restraint"
and
"In early 1980s, Roberts urged judicial restraint"

is now entitled

Files From 80's Lay Out Stances of Bush Nominee

You'd be better off reading the Globe for analysis:

Roberts showed way to shift the debate
Nominee advised using broad terms

WASHINGTON -- As a young aide in the Reagan administration's Justice Department, John G. Roberts Jr., now a Supreme Court nominee, advised his conservative colleagues to cloak their views behind broadly acceptable terms such as ''judicial restraint," according to memos released yesterday.

In 1981, for example, when the Justice Department was prepping Supreme Court nominee Sandra Day O'Connor for the same Senate confirmation questioning that Roberts will soon face, Roberts counseled her to avoid giving direct answers on legal issues facing the court.

''The approach was to avoid giving specific responses to any direct questions on legal issues likely to come before the Court, but demonstrating in the response a firm command of the subject area and awareness of the relevant precedents and arguments," Roberts wrote in one memo describing the mock questioning sessions he held with her.

In a February 1982 memo, Roberts urged Attorney General William French Smith to adopt a similar tactic in a speech before ''new right" conservative groups. The groups had criticized Smith's record for allegedly failing to appoint top officials and federal judges who were ''ideologically committed to the President's policies . . . with particular emphasis on the social agenda."

Although such attacks were sometimes ''completely unfounded," Roberts wrote, Smith should not defend the conservative credentials of Reagan's appointees because ''such an approach would open us up to criticism from the left and even the center."

Instead, Roberts wrote, Smith should focus on how Reagan's judicial nominees shared a philosophy of judicial restraint.

''I do not think we should respond with a 'yes they are [conservative]'; rather we should shift the debate," Roberts wrote. ''Judges do not implement policy in the true conservative view of things, and the hot issues of today will not be those of ten or fifteen years hence, when our judges will be confronted with new social issues. Our appointments process therefore looks beyond a laundry list of personal views to ascertain if the candidate has a proper appreciation of the judicial role."