Roberts Stays Solid Favorite Without Firm Answers

John G. Roberts Jr. exuded the quiet confidence of a man who knew that he was ahead in the game during a lengthy but mostly sedate confirmation hearing Tuesday.

He left the long first day of questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee the same way he entered it: a clear favorite for confirmation as the youngest chief justice of the United States in two centuries.

By firmly refusing to answer questions on specific cases he might face on the bench -- including the 1973 Supreme Court decision guaranteeing the right to abortion -- Roberts may have provided Democrats already inclined to reject him more grounds to do so. But most analysts agree that he said little that was likely to enlarge the circle of senators opposed to him.

Indeed, with his conciliatory comments on the right to privacy and the importance of precedent, Roberts appeared to provide centrist Democrats with greater “cover to vote for him,” said Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.

“Just on grounds of being evasive, he will probably get a core of Democrats who will vote against him,” Wittmann said. “But his nomination is not imperiled by any means.”

Roberts’ performance marked a bright spot for a White House battered by criticism of its response to Hurricane Katrina, and demonstrated the inherent vitality of presidential power.

Amid dissatisfaction not only with the hurricane response, but also with high gas prices and the war in Iraq, President Bush faces approval ratings for his job performance that are lower than the lowest points for such controversial predecessors as Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

Yet Bush is on the brink of installing a chief justice who could shape American life for more than the next quarter century. And in a few weeks, Bush is to nominate a justice to fill a second vacancy.

With two national polls released this week showing that at least 55% of Americans supported Roberts’ confirmation as the hearings began, GOP strategists expressed confidence that committee Democrats had not meaningfully dented Roberts’ likelihood of approval.

“I don’t think they landed a punch on him -- and they have to get a knockout,” said one GOP strategist who requested anonymity when discussing White House thinking. “They are not touching him.”

One supporting piece of evidence for that view was the reaction of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) to Tuesday’s hearing. Nelson, the leader of seven mostly centrist Democrats who reached a bipartisan deal in May over judicial filibusters, had said he was inclined to back Roberts absent unexpected revelations at the hearings.

As Tuesday’s questioning wound down, David DiMartino, Nelson’s spokesperson, said the senator “had not seen or heard anything problematic.”

On the other hand, one senior Senate Democratic aide said Roberts’ refusal to answer questions about his views on specific cases, following the White House’s refusal to release documents related to his service in the George H.W. Bush administration, could give opponents new ammunition to rally resistance. “There is no better way to [unify] our caucus than to stonewall,” said the aide, who requested anonymity when discussing Roberts’ nomination.

Roberts, in his testimony, was composed and rigidly disciplined. He did not make a reference to his family or personal life until after about three hours on the stand, when he cited his wife, young daughter and three sisters in rebutting charges from Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) that memos he had written as a government attorney displayed a lack of concern about discrimination against women.

When Roberts flashed the dry wit that friends have touted, Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) looked at him sympathetically and said, “You’re not an automaton.”

Only a few Democrats generated much momentum against him with their questions. Roberts seemed flustered when Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) pressed him about memos he had written on civil rights issues as a Justice Department attorney in the Reagan administration. There were fewer sparks between the Democrats and Roberts than between the Democrats and Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who repeatedly admonished Kennedy and Biden for interrupting Roberts’ answers with new questions.

The most tension revolved around how extensively Roberts would discuss his views on previous court rulings. Opponents such as Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, accused Roberts of evading “legitimate direct questions.”

Roberts’ supporters, in a torrent of e-mails released during the day, said he had properly demurred. “What he is doing is exactly what you would want a judge to do, which is to say, ‘I am not going to discuss matters that will come before me because I don’t want to prejudge them,’ ” said Ronald A. Cass, a former Boston University Law School dean working with a coalition supporting Roberts.

Roberts seemed most comfortable when he could discuss, in the tone of a law professor, rulings from the distant past, such as the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which helped spark the Civil War.

More relevantly, Roberts expressed support for the landmark 1965 Griswold vs. Connecticut ruling, which assured married couples access to birth control based on a constitutional right to privacy. Roberts’ comments on the Griswold ruling may have been reassuring for supporters of legalized abortion, because the right to privacy was also a foundation of the Roe vs. Wade decision. Roberts also may have heartened them when he emphasized his reluctance to overturn settled law.

Yet when discussing Griswold with Kohl, Roberts would not say whether he believed the right to privacy extended to abortion. Roberts quickly recoiled when Specter, a supporter of legalized abortion, nudged him to imply that his respect for precedent would lead him to uphold Roe.

“I feel the need to stay away from a discussion of particular cases,” Roberts told Specter a few minutes into the hearing. That was the first of many times Roberts would use such a formulation during his testimony.

Cass and David Yalof, a political scientist at the University of Connecticut who studies judicial appointments, said those answers, taken together, provided little guidance on whether Roberts would uphold the legal right to abortion.

But with his language on precedent and privacy, Roberts “gave a lot of ground to Democrats,” Yalof added.

Throughout the day, Roberts followed a consistent -- and often brilliantly effective -- strategy of citing historical examples dear to liberals to defend his views. For instance, to make his case against overly activist courts, Roberts did not assail any of the Earl Warren-era decisions denounced by conservatives. Instead, he said the court had overreached in Lochner vs. New York, the 1905 decision that overturned a Progressive-era law to set a 10-hour workday.

Roberts cited later decisions overturning Lochner and mentioned the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision banning school segregation to make his case that judges cannot always uphold precedents.

He used this tactic perhaps most effectively when Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) pressed him on memos he had written during the Reagan administration that aggressively asserted presidential authority to act without congressional oversight.

Roberts quickly noted that Justice Robert H. Jackson, a mid-20th century hero to Democrats, had expressed similar views as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attorney general, but “took an entirely different view” and voted to limit presidential power on the court.

“Are you sending us a message?” Leahy asked when Roberts finished.

Characteristically, Roberts avoided an unequivocal answer. Like many of his remarks Tuesday, his response to Leahy offered hints, but no promises, of conciliation in an era of intense partisan confrontation.