Nominee Excelled as an Advocate Before Court

"There's so little interplay, that skill may not mean very much," Hutchinson said.

Roberts has argued before the Supreme Court 39 times -- 29 times as counsel for a party to a case and 10 times as a friend of the court. His side won 25 times.

His first opportunity came in January 1989, when he was 33; the justices asked him to represent a convicted felon facing more than $100,000 in additional civil fines. Years later, major corporations would hire Roberts to defend their interests before the justices, making him a millionaire.

Such corporate clients as Toyota, Peabody Coal and the health insurance industry were getting a particular kind of legal talent for the $650 to $700 per hour that competitors say an advocate of Roberts's stature could command.

Oral argument before the Supreme Court is unlike trial advocacy, in which the lawyer's goal is to get a jury to see the facts his way. In the Supreme Court and other appeals courts, the goal is to convince a set of judges that your interpretation of a disputed point of law is correct.

Strong emotional rhetoric may sometimes pay off in a trial, where the jury sits mute as the lawyer speaks. But at the Supreme Court, justices demand cool and thorough analysis, and they insist on it in a barrage of questions for which the lawyer must spend hours preparing.

Roberts's intellect and demeanor are well-suited to this kind of contest, former colleagues say.

"He was able to take complicated points, distill them to their essence and respond with an absolute minimum of verbiage, and make it seem that his argument is so obviously correct that you have no choice but to agree with him," said Jonathan S. Franklin, who worked with Roberts for 10 years when Roberts headed the appellate practice at Hogan & Hartson, a Washington law firm.

"He is comfortable up there," Phillips said. "He is confident enough to know that he could have a conversation with the justices."

When Roberts is conversing with them, the justices -- known as a "hot bench" for their frequent questioning -- spend an unusual amount of time listening.

In a 1992 argument, Roberts, representing the U.S. government, took the position that antiabortion demonstrators who had tried to block access to an abortion clinic were not liable for discrimination against women under federal law. He had only 10 minutes to speak, because the Bush administration was in the case only as a friend of the court on the demonstrators' side.

But, writes Supreme Court practitioner David C. Frederick in a book on appellate advocacy that is full of examples from Roberts's cases, he "had the luxury of making his points without any interruption from the court until he was about to sit down."