Esteemed professor, don’t make me come and kick your...

LIGHTNING STRUCK on LiveCurrent last week when our contributors continued their live online debate on John G. Roberts Jr.’s old papers -- and academic restraint was the chief victim. Below is an edited sampling of the heated exchanges. Catch the action at latimes.com/livecurrent.

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Duke law professor Erwin Chemerinsky started the week’s blogging off with a bang:

The Reagan-era memos “released by the White House show an individual who was openly hostile to civil liberties and civil rights.” Unfortunately, the administration is doing all it can to prevent Roberts’ more recent views from being known by withholding memos he wrote while working in the solicitor general’s office. These “would provide an important indication of whether Roberts will vote to radically change the law in a conservative direction. Unless senators are satisfied that Roberts will be in the mainstream on such questions as protecting reproductive choice, they must deny him confirmation, by filibuster if necessary.”

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Marci Hamilton of Yeshiva University wrote that Roberts’ record suggests that he “will be inclined to continue the administration’s opposition to Roe and the separation of church and state but appears likely to reject its position on federal power in favor of Reagan’s small-government approach.”

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University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein found the memos to be very conservative, but mused that “many lawyers do not have the same views at 50 [Roberts’ age] as they held when 25, and very possibly, Roberts is less predictable now than when he was younger.”

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But Richard Epstein, also a law professor at the University of Chicago, was fed up with Chemerinsky’s “none-too-subtle effort to derail the Roberts nomination.” The additional information “Chemerinsky seeks is a desperate effort to find some choice tidbit that would submarine a nomination that looks highly likely to go through. Every bit as unsound is the implicit standard of judgment that he would apply: Anyone who is conservative on civil liberties and civil rights is persona non grata....Democrats would be well advised to ignore his foolish advice.

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Attorney Edward Lazarus wandered into the crossfire: “It seems to me that professor Epstein has unintentionally presented a compelling case for why we need a lot more information about Roberts .... If we don’t get access to Roberts’ paper trail, my fear is that the hearings become something of a sham -- with Roberts defending a watered-down and politically unobjectionable constitutional vision that may not reflect his true thinking.”

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Epstein: “It’s an open secret that all those who want to dig up this information on Roberts wish that he would disappear into the woodwork.

“They are casting about for ways to make their own opposition credible, and thus far have come up blank.... The right question to ask is whether the risks of this proposed inquisition promise any payoff that helps the public weal.”

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Hamilton worried about the recusal risks of a Senate-grilled Roberts. “On hot-button issues, he would be a non-factor, and we would have an eight-member court that cannot issue opinions when the divide is 4-4.”

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Shrugging off what he calls Epstein’s “insulting tone,” Chemerinsky maintained “if the record demonstrates that Roberts is likely to move the law much further to the right and jeopardize basic rights and freedoms, or if Roberts will not answer questions about his views, then it is entirely appropriate for Senate Democrats to filibuster. The Senate agreement allows the filibuster in ‘extraordinary circumstances.’ Extraordinary circumstances should and must include a nominee who would radically change the law in a way that 40 senators find unacceptable.”

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Epstein’s last word -- for the moment: “It is hard to conceive of a weaker case for ‘extraordinary circumstances’ that might allow a filibuster. After Roberts’ bland, if prudent, written responses to questions, it should be clear that any aggressive questioning will be skillfully parried by a general statement which rightly accords presumptive respect to most precedents.”