John Roberts: Just a Staff Attorney?

By Jeralyn, Section John Roberts
Posted on Wed Sep 14, 2005 at 03:39:35 PM EST
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Law Prof Eric Muller at Is That Legal takes issue with Judge John Roberts position that early in his career he was just a staff lawyer who didn't make policy decisions and just argued the way he was told.

....we are talking here about a man who left a clerkship with then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist to become a Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the United States under President Reagan, and who left that position to join the White House staff as Associate Counsel to the President.

These are no ordinary "staff attorney" positions. Nobody gets jobs of this sort just by being a talented young lawyer (as they do at the D.A.'s office, the Public Defender's Office, or the litigation firm downtown). These are, in their nature, ideological positions.

People for the American Way also scoffs at the claim that Roberts' position as Deputy Principal Solicitor General during Bush I was not an ideological position (received by e-mail):

During his Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, John Roberts has tried to create the impression that, as principal deputy solicitor general under George H.W. Bush, he was merely acting as a lawyer on behalf of a client, the Bush I administration, and that he did not play an important role in fashioning the controversial views expressed in briefs he signed. This is a preposterous claim, given the nature of the principal deputy solicitor general position and given what Roberts did while in that role.

...According to the New York Times, the main function of the “political deputy” was to see to it “that cases argued before the Supreme Court conform to the administration’s political agenda.”¹ [Neil A. Lewis, “The 1992 Campaign: Selection of Conservative Judges Insures a President’s Legacy,” New York Times (July 1, 1992); accord, Maralee Schwartz and Al Kamen, “Starr’s ‘Political’ Deputy,” Washington Post, The Federal Page, A25 (Sept. 22, 1989).]

As I noted here, the Wall Street Journal reported (free link):

According to Judge Roberts himself, promoting law and order -- a bedrock priority of Republican presidents since Richard M. Nixon -- marked his years in the solicitor general's office, at least as much as