Roberts won the case -- Rust v. Sullivan -- in which the Supreme Court agreed with the administration that the government could require doctors and clinics receiving federal funds to avoid talking to patients about abortion.
Those who know Luttig describe him as a warm and engaging but private man, who speaks in a Texas drawl and rarely goes to Washington social events.
His paper trail is extensive and, in the view of supporters, an asset rather than a liability because it offers the Republican base a guarantee of his conservatism that Roberts cannot match. Luttig is well known as one of the federal bench's leading advocates of the view, also endorsed by Scalia, that the text of constitutional provisions and statutes should be interpreted as close to literally as possible.
In 1999, he wrote the 4th Circuit opinion that struck down a portion of the federal Violence Against Women Act, saying Congress had exceeded its constitutional powers by giving rape victims the right to sue their attackers in federal court. The Supreme Court upheld Luttig's appellate opinion.
His record also includes at least one case bound to please antiabortion activists. When Virginia wanted to start enforcing a ban on the procedure critics call "partial birth" abortion in 1998, state officials sought out a conservative jurist -- Luttig -- who would rule in their favor.
His ruling for the 4th Circuit allowing the law to take effect overturned a lower court and ran contrary to courts in 17 other states in which bans on the controversial late-term procedure had been challenged.
Yet Luttig ultimately bowed to higher authority. In 2000, after the Supreme Court overturned a similar Nebraska law, Luttig wrote the 4th Circuit opinion invalidating Virginia's statute on "partial birth" abortion. Citing a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that reaffirmed Roe , Luttig wrote: "I understand the Supreme Court to have intended its decision . . . to be a decision of super-stare decisis with respect to a woman's fundamental right to choose." He added that Supreme Court precedent must be followed "faithfully."
Indeed, although Luttig's rhetoric has earned him a reputation as a staunch conservative, his adherence to textualism as he sees it has sometimes led to results that cannot be so easily categorized.
In 2002, Luttig became the first federal appeals judge to rule that inmates have a constitutional right to post-conviction DNA testing to try to prove their innocence, calling it "a matter of basic fairness." In 1999, he granted protection to a female college football kicker under the federal law, known as Title IX, that bans sex discrimination in federally funded educational programs.
The next year, Luttig supported a North Carolina newspaper in a notable First Amendment case. He ruled that a federal judge was wrong to order a reporter to disclose her sources for information that was published in violation of a court seal.
In a 2002 article in Judicature, published by the nonpartisan American Judicature Society, three political scientists compared Luttig's recent opinions with those of five other appellate court judges considered potential Supreme Court nominees.
They concluded that Luttig's rulings -- in the areas of criminal justice, civil rights and liberties and economic and labor regulation -- were conservative 68.2 percent of the time. That still made him "consistently conservative," the authors wrote, but not as conservative as the other judges.
The most conservative, the study concluded, was J. Harvie Wilkinson III, Luttig's colleague on the 4th Circuit, who is also considered a potential Supreme Court nominee.
"I've always felt that people who view him as a knee-jerk conservative or ideologue are completely off base," said former attorney general William P. Barr, who worked with Luttig in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in the early 1990s.
