Washington — Supreme Court nominee John Roberts disparaged state efforts to combat discrimination against women in Reagan-era documents made public Thursday - and wondered whether "encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good."
As a young White House lawyer, Roberts also expressed support for a national ID card in 1983, saying it would help counter the "real threat to our social fabric posed by uncontrolled immigration."
In words that may resurface - however humorously - at his confirmation hearing, he criticized a crime-fighting proposal by Sen. Arlen Specter as "the epitome of the 'throw money at the problem" approach.
Specter, R-Pa., then a first-term senator, is now chairman of the Judiciary Committee and will preside at Roberts' hearings, scheduled to begin Sept. 6.
The documents, released simultaneously in Washington and at the Reagan Library in California, show Roberts held a robust view of presidential powers under the Constitution. "I am institutionally disposed against adopting a limited reading of a statute conferring power on the president," he wrote in 1985.
Reporters sift through Reagan administration records of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Tens of thousands of pages of documents involving Roberts' work as an attorney in the Reagan White House were made public Thursday.
The materials made public completed the disclosure of more than 50,000 pages that cover Roberts' tenure as a lawyer in the White House counsel's office from 1982-86.
Nearly 2,000 more pages from the same period have been withheld on national security or privacy grounds.
Additionally, over the persistent protests of Senate Democrats, the White House has refused to make available any of the records covering Roberts' later tenure as principal deputy solicitor general during the administration of President George H.W. Bush.
Taken as a whole, the material released Thursday reinforced the well-established image of Roberts as a young lawyer whose views on abortion, affirmative action, school prayer and more were in harmony with the conservative president he served. In one memo, he referred favorably on an effort to "defund the left."
Democrats say they will question Roberts closely on those subjects and others at his hearings, and they scoured the newly disclosed documents. And despite the apparently long odds against them, civil rights and women's groups are beginning to mount an attempt to defeat his nomination.
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