Hail to the chief.(THE LAW)(John Roberts)

JOHN ROBERTS won praise from most quarters for his conduct during his 20 hours of questioning from senators. Some of this praise strikes us as a trifle overdone. How intellectually nimble does a member of the Supreme Court bar have to be to deal with Joe Biden? (Should the reviews tempt Roberts to arrogance, he should reflect that nobody is smarter than Biden believes himself to be.)

Roberts's answers suggested that his jurisprudence would be within the proper constitutional bounds. "Judges and justices are servants of the law, not the other way around," Roberts explained. "Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules. They apply them.... No one ever went to a hallgame to see the umpire." The subtext of his answers about international law was that they don't pick rules from other games in other countries, either. These are the constitutional basics, and they leave considerable room for disagreement about what good judging, like good umpiring, means in practice. Yet the basics seemed genuinely to puzzle a good many Senate Democrats. A good judge, in their view, was one who would protect "abortion rights." One who, in addition, would give Congress broad power, except when taking a broad view of individual rights. (When these two imperatives are in conflict, presumably a good judge consults the Democratic platform.)

In his discussion of the role precedent should play at the Supreme Court, and especially of the Court's precedents having to do with "privacy" and abortion, Roberts was careful. His answers did not commit him to overruling Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey--but that fact does not mean that he committed himself to upholding those rulings, either, even if a ...