Aron hopes the release of documents shedding light on Roberts' views will help avoid a repeat of his 2003 confirmation hearings to the D.C. Circuit Court. At the time, Roberts came before the Senate with glowing recommendations and almost no public record. Nonetheless, Republicans seemed determined to get him through committee with a minimum of scrutiny. Then-Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, scheduled a hearing on Roberts with two more explosive Circuit Court nominees, Deborah Cook and Jeffrey Sutton. Pressed for time, Democrats focused their questions on the two nominees with the longest records. "I was up there," Aron says of the hearings. "That was a horrible day."

Roberts passed out of committee, but only as part of a compromise with Sen. Hatch, a deal that would allow Democrats to block other nominees. "Democratic Committee staff had a lot of concerns of Roberts at his hearings in 2003," says a former committee staffer. "But he was allowed a vote as part of an agreement for Republicans to reinstate the committee filibuster rule." When he reached the full Senate, Democrats asked for unanimous consent to pass Roberts. Worried that he might later be nominated to the Supreme Court, they did not want to have their votes for him on the record.

No one expects Roberts to get such an easy pass this time around. "When I talk to Republicans in the Senate side, they don't think the fight is over," says Grover Norquist, a GOP stalwart who regularly consults with Karl Rove and Senate leaders. "I think the left's divisions are tactical." Liberal groups, he says, are probably just keeping their powder dry for the September hearings, or for another nominee. "It would be smart for the left to say, 'Do we really want to have that fight now, and lose the ability to have it in the future?'"

In the meantime, the Alliance's offices continue to operate on a war footing. About 20 interns and lawyers have been brought in for the summer, lining the corridors with fresh-faced men and women in their 20s, who sit at cramped desks. They publish a podcast and several Web sites, a blog, and, according to Landis, hold the trigger of an e-mail list of about 30,000 "e-activists throughout the country ready to take action and organize at a moment's notice." In his office, Adam Shah, the Alliance's 32-year-old senior counsel, sits behind a desk overrun with paper. Nearby, he has stacked thousands more pages, the briefs from Roberts' past cases. "As a judge he has sat on 400 cases," says Shah. "He has only written 44 of those. And only five of them are cases in which one of the judges disagreed."

To date, those five cases have provided only the smallest window into the mind of Judge Roberts. Aron, whose office is decorated with the roll call vote from her attempt to block the nomination of former Attorney General John Ashcroft, can do little more at this point than demand more information. "This is an individual who has been a part of every significant legal issue facing this country for the past 20 years," Aron explained. "It's obvious he has views."

It's just not obvious what they are. For now, that means Roberts is well on his way to a new, lifetime job.

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