A Clash Over Roberts Papers

In the past, administrations had at times chosen to turn over confidential work records when political appointees were nominated to the bench, including during the confirmation process for Robert H. Bork, whose nomination to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan was defeated by the Senate.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), one of the committee's most vocal Democrats, said the administration decision will "make our job of learning Judge Roberts' judicial philosophy and legal reasoning so much the harder, and puts a special onus on fair and thorough hearings where Judge Roberts answers questions fully and unambiguously."

That is another possible signal of future clashes between Senate Democrats and the administration because the White House and Republican senators have said Roberts should not have to answer questions about his personal legal or political views.

The White House defended the pace and quantity of the release of documents, saying in a letter to Schumer yesterday that the administration was providing 65,000 pages of documents to the committee, including certain records from Roberts's days in the White House counsel's office under President Reagan.

The letter said some -- but not all -- of the documents that Schumer had requested from that period will be produced by Aug. 22 -- a little more than two weeks before the hearings are scheduled to begin.

The letter, from legislative affairs director Candida Wolff, said the material being released "will enable the Committee to engage in full, fair, and prompt consideration of Judge Roberts' nomination."

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said in a letter to Bush that White House officials are dragging their feet in producing documents they had agreed to furnish, while engaging in "the leaking of highly selective documents" that are "intended to paint a better picture of the nominee." On Thursday, the administration selectively released to news organizations two Reagan-era documents, but so far has not acted on requests for thousands of other documents.

Among the documents produced so far was a curiosity -- a memo by the young Roberts arguing against lifetime appointments for the federal judiciary, coming to light more than two decades later as he now holds one such lifetime post as a federal appeals judge and hopes to hold another on the high court.

Roberts wrote in a memo on Oct. 3, 1983, to White House counsel Fred F. Fielding that the Constitution "adopted life tenure at a time when people simply did not live as long as they do now," and he argued that limiting the terms of federal judges would ensure a fresh supply of talent and guard against "ivory tower" elitism, according to an Associated Press report.