John Roberts should be a quick confirm. In 1995, while clerking for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, I and my two fellow law clerks asked the chief whom he thought was the best Supreme Court lawyer currently practicing. The chief replied, with a twinkle in his eye, that he thought he could probably get a majority of his colleagues to agree that John Roberts was the best Supreme Court advocate in the nation.
This week, the president announced his intention to nominate John Roberts to be a Supreme Court justice.
His nomination has been met with widespread praise, from left and right. Nevertheless, there are some who have raised complaints that his two years on the bench provide insufficient record for them to assess (and attack) his jurisprudence. That complaint misses the mark for three reasons. First, his judicial record would have stretched 14 years, had Senate Democrats not delayed its consideration twice, in 1991 and again in 2001.
When his nomination did finally make it to the Senate floor, in 2003, he was confirmed by unanimous consent. Second, many distinguished jurists, such as Chief Justices William Rehnquist and Earl Warren and Justices O’Connor, Souter, and Thomas, similarly had very limited experience on the federal bench prior to ascending to the Court. And third, although two years on the bench provides a limited number of opinions, he has a far longer record that is relevant: his professional career as a Supreme Court litigator. At the outset, Judge Roberts is brilliant. A summa cum laude Harvard graduate, Roberts began by clerking for two giants of the bench, Judge Henry Friendly, and Chief Justice Rehnquist.