THE DEATH OF Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and President Bush's nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to succeed him have led to a brief delay in the opening of Roberts' confirmation hearings -- and Democrats are using the occasion to demand more of Roberts' legal records.
But the Senate Judiciary Committee has an ample record on which to proceed. The White House's release of more than 50,000 pages of documents from Roberts' service as a White House and Department of Justice lawyer in the 1980s is unprecedented: No Supreme Court nominee has ever had his confidential legal work more fully disclosed to public scrutiny than John Roberts.
The phased releases of these Reagan-era records have predictably generated a series of morning-after news stories summarizing -- sometimes accurately, sometimes not -- the particular documents that seem to bear on hot-button issues. These documents shed varying degrees of light on Roberts' views from two decades ago.
We know, for example, that Roberts steadfastly defended the "bedrock principle of treating people on the basis of merit without regard to race or sex" and therefore opposed racial and gender quotas as well as forced busing of public school students.
We also learned about his defense of equal-pay statutes and his appropriately scathing critique of the radical "comparable worth" theory, which would require an army of bureaucrats to set the wages of all workers throughout the American economy.
We know that Roberts both described abortion as a "tragedy" and eloquently denounced those who resorted to violent measures against abortion clinics.
And we know that he supported the government's traditional role in affirming, acknowledging and promoting respect for religion generally while avoiding any sectarian endorsement of particular religions.
In other words, Roberts' records show him to be a strong and principled legal conservative with views that resonated, then as now, with most Americans.
But the clearest insight on how Roberts would approach constitutional decision-making is not provided by these isolated documents on hot-button issues. It is instead reflected in Roberts' consistent commitment to the jurisprudence of judicial restraint, a commitment that pervades these records.
