WASHINGTON -- Appeals court Judge John G. Roberts Jr., President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, focused his first round of get-acquainted visits on Capitol Hill last week on the small group of pivotal players he will have to win over to get a full vote in the Senate: the 18 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

	John G. Roberts Jr.

During the battle over Bush's most conservative picks for the federal bench in the past few years, the committee's members -- an ideologically diverse group of lawyers and former prosecutors -- have often been at the center of the controversy.

They are charged with assessing each judicial nominee's fitness for the courts by combing through the nominee's background and judicial writings and questioning witnesses, including the nominee, before deciding whether to send the nomination to the full Senate for a vote.

But many senators believe Supreme Court nominees require a far higher level of scrutiny than lower-court judges, and with a potentially contentious nomination before them, many of the committee's senators said last week they have already began to prepare for the public confirmation hearings, which will begin in late August or early September.

Ranking Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy, who has participated in 10 Supreme Court confirmations, said he plans to spend August in Vermont in a T-shirt and jeans reading through Roberts' decisions on the appeals court. Other senators -- particularly Republicans -- are participating in the process for the first time, and some are reviewing past confirmation hearings to get a better sense of their duties as questioners.

It has been 11 years since the Senate had a Supreme Court nomination -- Justice Stephen Breyer in 1994. But the Roberts hearings are expected to be far more complex than the previous two -- when Breyer and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sailed through without much difficulty -- because Roberts would replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a swing vote on a deeply divided court.

Already many Democratic senators are honing their questions on key issues, ranging from Roberts' views on the right to privacy -- the foundation for the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion -- to how broadly the courts should interpret Congress' constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce.

Even though it has only been a week since Roberts' name was announced, several Judiciary Committee members are moving into their respective roles of chief skeptics and defenders.

Committee Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a Republican who favors abortion rights, has said he will try to be an impartial figure presiding over the hearings, but other Republicans clearly intend to shepherd Roberts through the process.

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, a staunch conservative who chaired the committee before Specter, has warned Democrats against trying to defeat Roberts. When Democrats blocked 10 of Bush's judicial nominees last session with a delaying tactic known as the filibuster -- a maneuver in which the minority party refuses to cut off debate and the majority party falls short of the 60 votes required to call for a vote -- Hatch was one of the lead Republicans pressuring Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to use his party's 55-seat majority to strip Democrats of that power by changing the rules.

Sen. John Cornyn has been the administration's point man throughout the debate over judicial nominees, in part because he was a judge who served on the Texas Supreme Court for seven years. The former Texas attorney general continually upbraided Democrats for using the filibuster and argued that nominees deserve votes by the full Senate.

After liberal Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., made a speech last week saying Americans deserved to know whether Roberts was on the "side of justice" or "powerful special interests," within hours Cornyn met with reporters to underscore his view that "judges are not supposed to be on anybody's side" and said he was troubled by what he saw as early signs of a Democratic strategy to defeat Roberts.

Roberts' other key defenders on the committee are likely to be Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, who heads the Senate's Republican Policy Committee, and Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, a former Alabama attorney general.

Two of the Senate's most conservative senators also sit on the Judiciary Committee: Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Although both praised Roberts last week, they are expected to be somewhat more cautious in their support than fellow Republicans because they are staunch crusaders against abortion rights, and Roberts' writings and previous testimony have made his views on the subject unclear.

Judiciary Committee Republicans Mike DeWine of Ohio, a former prosecutor, and Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina will also be closely watched. Both received considerable heat from conservative constituents after signing the so-called "Gang of 14" agreement in which seven Republicans agreed to protect the Democrats' right to filibuster judicial nominations and seven Democrats agreed to filibuster only in "extraordinary circumstances."

Graham has surprised members of his party with his tough questioning of some of Bush's nominees, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. In this case, Graham said he intends to ask tough questions but not to play "gotcha."

A number of the committee's eight Democrats have taken active roles in previous confirmation hearings. Chief among them is Leahy, the committee's ranking Democrat who is charged with negotiating with Specter over scheduling, the number of witnesses who will appear, and what information and documents the committee should have access to from Roberts' past.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware was Judiciary Committee chairman during the controversial confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas, who was accused of sexual harassment by then-University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill, his former deputy. Biden's name has been mentioned frequently over the past week because he also presided over Ginsburg's hearing in 1993 when she refused to reveal her view of Roe v. Wade, among other issues.

At that time, Biden told Ginsburg she had a right to choose what she wanted to answer or not answer and said in his view she should not answer a question on an issue was clearly going to come before the court frequently during her tenure -- a statement that Republicans are already using as a basis to argue that Roberts should not have to answer many of questions Democrats are interested in posing.

Biden's role may be difficult to predict in these hearings because he recently took the offensive against the Bush administration when it refused to turn over documents he viewed as critical to determining whether John R. Bolton should be confirmed as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Bolton was blocked by a Democratic filibuster.

It appears Democrats and Republicans may once again spar over access to documents during Roberts' confirmation process -- in this case memos he wrote while he was associate counsel to President Reagan between 1982 and 1986 and as principal deputy solicitor general under President George H.W. Bush from 1989 to 1993.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the first woman to serve on the committee, is known for her thoroughness and her quiet, but persistent, questioning style, and is sure to play a key role in the Roberts hearings.

Three other Senate Democrats also likely to figure prominently in the questioning of Roberts are those who voted against Roberts in committee when he was nominated to the appeals court: Kennedy, Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Charles E. Schumer of New York, who has already held two news conferences demanding that Roberts be more forthcoming than he was in 2003. Schumer also has given Roberts a list of dozens of questions he might ask so the nominee.