Roberts: liberal groups begin to attack
The Washington Post reports: After sitting mostly silent for more than a week after the Supreme Court nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr., liberal activist groups and their allies in the Senate yesterday expressed growing concern about the conservative positions Roberts advocated while working as a young Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration.
Memos and other documents from Roberts's work as a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith show that Roberts took positions that some of those groups regard as hostile to civil rights. The documents show that he advocated a narrow interpretation of a variety of civil rights laws, and presented a defense of congressional efforts to strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction over busing, abortion and school prayer cases.
The emerging portrait of Roberts, liberal activist groups say, is not that of a dutiful advocate who was a step above the political fray, as Roberts has been described by his White House sponsors and supporters. Instead, they say, the documents reveal Roberts as an intense and ambitious partisan who appears to have been at the center of the Reagan administration's efforts to put a conservative stamp on government.
"With every passing day, it is becoming clearer that John Roberts was one of the key lieutenants in the right-wing assault on civil rights laws and precedents," said Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group. -- Judge's Reagan-Era Work Criticized