I’m glad someone took the initiative of doing research on Bush’s SCOTUS nominee for me, because it saved me a lot of time and effort. And to turn up what? Not much.

Dave Roberts at the Gristmill did some digging, and turned up this analysis by law professor Robert Gordon:

All the indications are that he will become another vote to expand presidential power in national-security affairs, to limit the federal government's authority to regulate business and the environment and protect civil rights, to make it harder for women, minorities, labor and the disabled to pursue practical remedies in the courts, and to favor a larger role for religion in public life and as object of public subsidy. He is most likely to do this incrementally, case-by-case, rather than by sweeping new doctrines.

Of course, the idea of “limiting the federal government’s authority to regulate [...] the environment” doesn’t sound that terrible, until we refer to this choice quote from a People for the American Way report on Judge Roberts:

Judge Roberts issued a troubling dissent from the decision by the full D.C. Circuit not to reconsider the important ruling by the three-judge panel in this case upholding the constitutionality of the Endangered Species Act as applied in this matter. [...]

Roberts’s dissent in Rancho Viejo strongly suggested that he thought it would be unconstitutional to apply the Endangered Species Act in this case. By his vote to rehear the case and thus potentially reverse the district court, Roberts indicated that he may well be ready to join the ranks of such right-wing officials as Judge Michael Luttig (who dissented in Gibbs) and Alabama Attorney General William Pryor — nominated by President Bush to the Eleventh Circuit and unilaterally placed on that court by the President through a recess appointment — in their efforts to severely limit the authority of Congress to protect environmental quality as well as the rights and interests of ordinary Americans.

As a point of reference I offer a link to a piece I wrote a few months ago detailing the place of the commerce clause as the cornerstone of American environmental legislation, and the view of some conservative jurists that the scope of the commerce clause ought to be more limited.

Of course, it’s hard to say what Judge Roberts will be like when he becomes Justice Roberts (as he no doubt will), since he only has a couple years of judicial history to look back on. Roberts is predominantly a lawyer, which leads me to believe that poot might have been wrong in his belief that Bush would appoint a party-line “yes man” rather than a relatively independent, possibly even roguish, lawyer. I’m no legal scholar, but I hope he’s right when he says that “win or lose a particular court battle, you'll always do better with a real lawyer on the bench.”