Roberts' Interviews with White House Officials Prior to Gitmo Ruling Raise Questions

We turn now to the latest on Supreme Court nominee Judge John Roberts. Roberts received a "well qualified" rating from the American Bar Association on Wednesday, clearing another hurdle in his path to the nation's highest court.

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said it was "regrettable" the ABA did not review Roberts' documents that have been provided to the Senate.

Leahy on Tuesday said the documents "paint a picture of John Roberts as an eager and aggressive advocate of policies that are deeply tinged with the ideology of the far right wing of his party then and now." A huge volume of papers relating to Roberts' work as a lawyer in the Reagan administration in the 1980s is scheduled to be released today.

In another Roberts development, new details are emerging over a potentially serious conflict of interest. Since 2003, Roberts served on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

As we reported previously, Roberts was part of a three-judge panel that handed President Bush an important victory the week before he announced Roberts' nomination to the bench. The appeals court ruled in the Hamdan V. Rumsfeld case that the military tribunals of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could proceed. The decision also found that Bush could deny terrorism captives prisoner-of-war status as outlined by the Geneva Conventions.

Well, new details have emerged concerning the timing of Roberts' interviews for the Supreme Court post with senior Bush administration officials which call into question his impartiality in the Hamdan case. Roberts" answers to a Senate questionnaire reveal that he met with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales six days before hearing oral arguments. The Hamdan case was argued on behalf of the administration by a top Gonzales deputy, Assistant Attorney General Peter Kiesler.

In addition to Gonzales, he met with Vice President Dick Cheney, the vice president's chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, Bush's top political strategist, Karl Rove and White House legal council Harriet Miers. And, on the day the ruling was issued in favor of the administration, Bush himself conducted the final job interview with Roberts.

Salon.com describes it like this: "Imagine that you're a party to a lawsuit. Now imagine that, once the case is over and you've lost, you find out that the judge who ruled against you was interviewing for a job with your opponent at the same time he was presiding over your case. Would you feel, just maybe, that the judge had a conflict of interest? And how would you feel knowing that the judge got the job he was seeking -- and that the job was a lifetime appointment as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court?"

* David Luban, Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He co-wrote an article for online magazine Slate titled 'Improper Advances; Talking Dream Jobs with the Judge out of Court'.
* Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

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