Bush names Roberts to Supreme Court

Washington Times ^ | Wednesday, July 20, 2005 | By Joseph Curl

[JohnHuang2]

President Bush last night nominated staunch conservative John G. Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court, saying the Harvard-educated lawyer and appeals court judge will "strictly apply the Constitution and laws -- not legislate from the bench." "A nominee to that court must be a person of superb credentials and the highest integrity, a person who will faithfully apply the Constitution and keep our founding promise of equal justice under law," the president said in a nationally televised, prime-time announcement. "I have found such a person in Judge John Roberts." In picking the 50-year-old former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice William H. Rehnquist, Mr. Bush rejected much speculation that he would nominate a centrist or a woman to replace the high court's first woman, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who announced her retirement July 1. His choice prompted immediate opposition from such liberal groups as People for the American Way and NARAL Pro-Choice America, which criticized a 1990 legal briefing he wrote while serving in the first President Bush's administration that called for the Supreme Court's 1973 ruling legalizing abortion to be "overruled."