Bush Nominates Roberts as Chief Justice

Bush summoned Roberts to the White House on Sunday, and the two met in the residential quarters at 5:30 p.m. for 30 to 45 minutes, McClellan said. White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. sat in at first and then left the two alone. Bush called Roberts back to the White House at 7:15 a.m. yesterday and offered him the job. Bush made the announcement 45 minutes later.

Card discussed the decision with Frist, Reid, Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and the committee's ranking Democrat, Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), while the White House counsel's office called Justice John Paul Stevens, the court's senior member and acting chief, to inform him of the decision. Bush did not call O'Connor to tell her that her retirement may be postponed until after he was on Air Force One flying to Louisiana.

Although the chief justice has no more votes than his eight brethren, he presides over their conferences, sets the initial agenda for considering cases and, when in the majority, assigns which justice will write a ruling, defining the extent of its reach. He also wields a variety of administrative and policy powers not only over the high court but the broader federal judiciary and has a number of unique responsibilities, such as presiding over presidential impeachment trials and appointing the court that reviews secret wiretaps by U.S. intelligence agencies.

Most chief justices have been appointed from outside the Supreme Court, but in the past century they typically had long tenures on lower courts or had served as governors, Cabinet secretaries or, in one case, president. With just two years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Roberts boasts no such credential and would be much younger than the colleagues he would lead. Three and a half decades his senior, Stevens, 85, was already a justice when Roberts was an undergraduate at Harvard University.

But Roberts has the advantage of being well known to the justices, having argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court. "He can pull it off because they really respect him," said Leonard A. Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group. "What other justices look for in a chief justice is honesty, straight-shooting and smarts. That's what they want, and that's what they'll get."

Roberts grew up in Indiana, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, clerked for Rehnquist, worked as a lawyer in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department and White House, and served as principal deputy solicitor general under Kenneth W. Starr in the George H.W. Bush administration. A decade of private practice earned him the status of one of Washington's most accomplished appellate lawyers before the president put him on the appeals court in 2003.

Documents released from his government service in the past few weeks revealed Roberts to be a strong conservative with a sharp pen opposed to many affirmative action programs, open to more religion in public arenas and deeply skeptical of what he called the "so-called right to privacy" that undergirds abortion and other rights established by the Supreme Court.

As the Senate digests that record in coming weeks, Bush will turn his attention to his second nomination, although advisers believe he is likely to wait to make an announcement until after the final Roberts confirmation vote to avoid complicating that process and to allow him to publicly focus on disaster relief in the Gulf Coast.

Conservative allies will press the White House to pick another Roberts. "He's a perfect fulfillment of the president's promise," said Wendy E. Long, chief counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, a group dedicated to promoting judges who will strictly interpret the Constitution. "There's great happiness with him. If there were another Judge Roberts out there, or the closest thing, I think that would be perfect."

In this view, appeals judges such as J. Michael Luttig, Edith Hollan Jones, Priscilla R. Owen and Emilio M. Garza would be leading contenders. Appellate judge Edith Brown Clement, who fled her home in New Orleans because of Katrina, was a finalist when Roberts was chosen and, although not considered for chief justice, she could again be on the list for associate justice. So, too, could Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who was interviewed by Bush in July, although at 60 he may be older than the president would like to ensure a long tenure.

The most prominent candidate on Bush's list is Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, his Texas friend who would be the first nation's Hispanic justice, but conservatives vocally oppose him out of fear that he is a closet moderate.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), a Bush ally, said yesterday that the president will probably name a woman or a minority to replace the nation's first female justice and offered a vigorous defense of Gonzales. "He would be a very good nominee and one that I would be happy to support," Cornyn said. "I've read about these concerns from some conservatives, and I really wonder where they are getting some of these strange ideas."

Staff writer Jo Becker contributed to this report.