The reason that a guy like Roberts is nominated for a seat on the Supreme Court, upgraded to Chief Justice when his mentor, the late incumbent, dies, is because he can be trusted to do what's right by the people in power, in this case George W. Bush, who, in case it's slipped your memory, was appointed to the presidency by the same late incumbent, the fella' Roberts worked for.
What's right?
What's that?
What's right in the case of a conservative like Roberts, who clerked for the conservative Rehnquist, is to oppose abortion, favor the death penalty, oppose privacy except for property and people like you, which leaves out pregnant women and gays, oppose affirmative action as being, well, unequal, especially to people like you, oppose Congressional power when it conflicts with states rights, and oppose as much federal regulation of business as possible, which means that in a conflict between a developer and a toad, well, the toad is hapless, right?
Should you ever find yourself in the position, as Roberts did last week, of being nominated to the Chief-Justice-ship, or merely of line duty as an associate justice, you must remember this about Constitutional Law. You cannot do it as a justice, chief or regular, unless you get confirmed.
How does one get confirmed?
One must pretend.
Pretend what?
One must pretend that one has no personal views or values worth mentioning, despite these being the ones that brought you to the dance in the first place.
When Roberts was clerking for Rehnquist, the Court was split in two over the death penalty and abortion. The clerks were just as split, between the abolitionists of the death penalty and the killers, the abortionists and the anti-abortionists, the liberals and the conservatives. See Edward Lazarus's "Closed Chambers." Lazarus, a former clerk, spilled the beans.
Guess which camp Roberts was in.
First clue: he was nominated by Bush, of the right.
So for Roberts now to claim that he has no views, and since justices don't make law, he has no duty to tell what he believes in, because, after all, litigants have the right not to have their cases prejudged by judges who've tipped their hands, is a little insincere.
For if it is correct that justices make no law, and must decide cases without reference to their own core beliefs as to how the Constitution should read, if only it did, then why bother with the week-long charade of the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, to be followed by a vote of the full Senate?
If it makes no difference what a justice, or a Chief Justice, believes, then why bother having him appointed by the president in the first place? Why not just have a lottery and choose some private citizen who needn't even be a lawyer? One person would be as good as the next, just like congressmen, when it comes to deciding cases. Juries are composed of lay-people, why not Supreme Court justices, since neither makes law, right?
Wrong.
All Supreme Court justices DO is to make law, with every case decided. The law made is either new or a reaffirmation of prior law. Does the court extend the right of privacy to cover a new situation, such as gay rights in Lawrence v. Texas? That's new law.
Do you think that Roberts would have voted in favor of the extension in Lawrence? Neither do I.
Why?
Because of those personal views that got him appointed by Bush who was appointed by Rehnquist who served as Roberts's mentor back in the days when the justices, and their clerks, were split into two almost armed camps, liberal vs. conservative, abolitionist vs. killer as to the death penalty, and pro-choice vs. anti-abortion.
The only true conclusion when it comes to Supreme Court nominees, and justices, is that personal attitude and values are everything, not the nothing that the charade-meisters would have you believe.
I have trouble believing that there ARE really conservative people such as Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist, and Roberts. But, bowing to reality, I'm prepared to believe that Roberts is a conservative, not a liberal.
Whether Roberts is as conservative as the others, above, is another issue. It's hard to be that conservative and believe that private property is really private, that you have a right not to answer (for to answer would be to invade your privacy), etc, unless you believe that what's yours is private. Private means not subject to the opinions of the nosy neighbors, you know, the voters. Private means not having your property taken because your socialistic neighbors think they know how to use it better, that is for the public good, than you do. That was the Kelo v. New London case, last term.
If there's one value that conservatives really love, for themselves, is equality, liberty, freedom, and privacy.
It's just that conservatives aren't all that happy about extending these rights to the less deserving, such as women, minorities, gays, and people whose religions don't begin with Abraham of Ur about 8,000 years ago, you know, the guy who quarreled with God and set the precedent for asking inconvenient questions of authority. Now there was a man who had personal values he wasn't afraid to reveal even to God.
When you are finished shoveling aside all the Conlaw you've read, you will find that underlying all of the conflict(s) above is a divide that tells you what it's all really about.
This is the basic conflict over how much of one's individuality must one relinquish in order to live in society, and how much society must give up in order to encourage individuals to develop and express their individuality. It's "Be all you can be" (the volunteer Army's individualistic recruiting slogan) vs. "We're all in the same boat together" (Brandeis's more "socialistic" notion).
In case you weren't there, "socialism" aka communism, has been THE dirty word in American politics for the past century and more. Never mind that the traditional family is run on communistic lines (the strong take care of the weak according to need, regardless of material contribution of the economically weak).
But this principle conflicts with the salutary greed principle on which a market economy (formerly known as a capitalistic society) works. Why is greed salutary? Because if you can harness greed productively, as we do, you have the most powerful engine of economy devised by man. We've tried other incentives such as religion, patriotism, nationalism, and appeals to the brotherhood of man, but the fact is that when you see your lazy cheating neighbor taking it easy off the sweat of your brow, you don't want to support him, you want to shoot him. So we throw him to the wolves in a dog-eat-dog world (witness the poor blacks of N. Orleans in the recent Hurricane Katrina and resulting flood) while we look out for ourselves. Social Darwinism lives.
Now, of course, we need to support all those poor, broke people who fled their homes, jobs, and businesses, and hospitals, because we need them to wait on tables and blow jazz to bring the tourist money back so we can do it all over again until the next hurricane. How much are the haves supposed to support the have-nots? This is that basic conflict underlying Constitutional law anywhere all over again.
To rebuild N. Orleans, and the three states of the area, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, that have been devastated, the rest of the country is going to have to pitch in and help with money and effort, on the theory "We're all in the same boat," of course. Socialism kicks in to bring the forces of capitalism to bear. The market economy will rise again, once the helping-hand economy sets people back on their feet again with tax dollars that came from the haves.
Ah, well, what goes around comes around, as they say.