New Justices Take the Podium, Putting Personalities on Display

Alito, too, drew laughs with his speech Thursday night to the Federalist Society, but there was a scratchier tone to his address. He still seems a little sore about his confirmation hearings, which were tougher than what Roberts faced.

Or maybe Alito was just playing to his audience, which has become increasingly influential in nominations to the federal bench and cheers any reference to frustrated liberal Democrats. So they loved his comment that when he gets near the Hart Senate Office Building, where he spent days last November paying courtesy calls to senators, "invariably without thinking . . . I cross to the other side of the street."

He added: "My membership in the Federalist Society did not become a major factor in my confirmation hearings. Now, I think the reason for that probably was that some senators found so many other objectionable features about my record that they could attack that they had no need."

There's reason for Alito to be a little sensitive. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) last week told the New York Observer that his party's biggest failure during the last Congress was allowing Alito to take the bench.

On the Senate campaign trail this fall, the formula that many Democratic candidates used to show they would be judicious but not recalcitrant when it came to Supreme Court nominees was that they would have voted for Roberts but not for Alito.

Whether there will be that much difference between the two men in their judicial philosophies will be played out over the years.

Both, though, had similar messages last week. Alito said that "all public servants, not just judicial officers, play a role in shaping our law, interpreting our Constitution" and that it is wrong for "any public officials to ignore questions about the bounds of their authority in our constitutional system and simply say that the courts will sort that out for them."

Roberts said nearly the same thing. "The great gift of the founding generation was the right of self-government," he said. "We shouldn't give it up so easily to think that all the important issues are going to be decided by the Supreme Court."

Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.