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Roberts gets top U.S. judicial post

Julian Borger

Rare victory for embattled Bush

WASHINGTON: John Roberts was confirmed as America's Chief Justice with a clear Senate majority marking a rare victory for George Bush in a blizzard of setbacks, failures and embarrassments.

The Senate voted 78-22 for Mr. Roberts, with 22 Democrats crossing the aisle, as the President watched with his nominee on a White House television. Though many liberals suspect the new Chief Justice will turn out to be a radical rightwinger on social issues, they could point to little hard evidence in his record, and the federal appeals judge was able to parry questions about abortion and other emotive subjects in front of the Senate.

Contentious straits

Welcoming the vote, Arlen Specter, Republican Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said: ``To come away with 78 votes, considering where the Senate was, in such contentious straits, earlier this year, I think is really remarkable.''

After being sworn in on Thursday, Mr. Roberts will take his seat on Monday as the 17th Chief Justice, replacing William Rehnquist, who died earlier this month after 19 years in the top judicial job.

Like Rehnquist, he is viewed as a strict but pragmatic conservative.

Mr. Bush's choice to fill the second court vacancy could be more controversial. The outgoing judge, Sandra Day O'Connor, is a moderate, and her replacement by an ideological conservative would tilt the court's balance sharply to the right. The Democrats have vowed to unite against a hardliner, and Mr. Bush has to make his choice when his popularity rating is languishing at around 40 per cent after the fiasco of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina and a constant flow of bad news from Iraq.

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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