WASHINGTON -- As Congress rushed to adjourn last week for its August recess, the pressure was building on Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter and the committee's ranking Democrat, Patrick J. Leahy, to strike a deal on when to hold confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr.

	Sen. Arlen Specter

Setting a date might seem simple enough, but with Roberts' potential to replace a swing vote on the court, the decision was complicated by outside forces.

As White House officials pressed Specter, R-Pa., for early hearings to give Roberts' opponents less time to plot a strategy to delay his confirmation, key Democratic senators and liberal interest groups were pushing Leahy, D-Vt., in the other direction. They were urging Leahy to build in enough time before the hearings to fully vet the nominee and to resist Specter's request that the Democrats commit to a date for a full Senate vote.

At one point, Leahy's patience snapped when Specter mentioned the negotiations during a committee hearing.

"I wish all the conflicting groups would back off, including the Senate leadership and the White House, and let Chairman Specter and [me] work this out," Leahy said. "I have an enormous amount of respect for the chairman; he keeps his commitments to me and to others. I think if it is left to us, we'll have a hearing the Senate can be proud of."

In a deeply polarized Senate, the cordial rapport between Specter and Leahy has been striking as they have moved into the high pressure, high profile role of overseeing the first Supreme Court nomination in 11 years.

Before-the-camera clashes are now a matter of course between younger, more partisan members of the Senate, particularly on issues that come before the Judiciary Committee, such as judicial nominations, constitutional amendments and civil liberties. But Leahy and Specter are part of the Senate old guard -- products of a time when senators placed more emphasis on gentility than confrontation and often were more influenced by each other than by outside interest groups.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican who is one of the most senior members on the committee, described the Specter-Leahy working relationship last week as "surprisingly good."

"There's so much rancor around here, and particularly on that committee," Grassley said, noting the vast ideological differences between the committee's Republican members, which include hard-line conservative Sens. John Cornyn of Texas, Sam Brownback of Kansas and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and its liberal Democrats, like Sens. Charles E. Schumer of New York and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

But between Specter and Leahy, Grassley said, the rancor "just doesn't seem to be there."

Both were prosecutors before being elected to the Senate -- Leahy in 1974; Specter in 1980. And they met a decade before serving in the Senate together at a national conference of district attorneys, which Specter was hosting in his home city of Philadelphia.

On the Judiciary Committee, both have taken particular interest in the Senate's oversight powers. They worked closely together, for example, on the Senate investigation of Ruby Ridge, the 1992 federal raid on the Idaho cabin of Randall Weaver, a member of the white supremacist group Aryan Nations Congress.

Federal agents were seeking Weaver on a weapons charge, but in the firefight that ensued, which included officials from the U.S. Marshal's Service and the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, federal officials shot Weaver's son and his wife, who was unarmed and holding her daughter in her arms. The Senate investigation in 1995 led to changes in the rules for federal agents' use of deadly force.

Since Specter succeeded conservative Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, as Judiciary chairman, Leahy has praised him for taking on oversight issues that other Republicans resisted, such as the legal rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Their shared experience as district attorneys, Leahy said, has made it possible for them to "talk in shorthand."

"I tell him often that while I'd much prefer we were in the majority and I was chairman, if I weren't going to be in the majority, I can't think of anybody in the Senate I'd rather have as chairman than he," Leahy said in an interview last week.

"It's sort of like the old Senate when I first came here. Senators always kept their word to one another and things moved along more smoothly. He's that way," Leahy said. "If he disagrees with me, he'll tell me and we don't have to waste time playing games."

Specter said while the two have had their disagreements, they have remained friends over their 25 years together on the Judiciary Committee. He noted that his independence from his party on certain issues, such as the confirmation of some of President Bill Clinton's judicial nominees, has helped his relationships with Democrats such as Leahy.

"When I've taken the position that Democrats should not stay on party lines, I didn't stay on party line," he said.

Referring to the bitter fights in recent years over judicial nominees in both the Clinton and Bush administrations, Specter said, "it seemed to me in getting started this year that there had to be an extra effort at a rapport between the two leaders and the two parties on Judiciary."

Hatch, whose relationship with Leahy was described by one senator as being like oil and water, said Specter and Leahy find it easier to get along in part because they are more ideologically alike than he and Leahy were.

"He agreed with Arlen more than he agreed with me on a lot of issues, so that's just kind of a natural thing," Hatch said. "I think [Democrats] really want to cooperate with Senator Specter, whereas sometimes they didn't want to cooperate with me."

"The Democrats had to have Senator Specter in order to accomplish the things they wanted to accomplish," Hatch added. "Let me put it this way: They were very kind and decent to Arlen Specter when I was chairman. He was a pivotal vote in both times. ... If they could get Arlen Specter, it was a 10-to-9 vote in their favor. If they get it now, it's a tie -- but it stops things."

It remains to be seen whether the Specter-Leahy rapport can be preserved under the strain of the upcoming hearings on Roberts.

Leahy and Specter passed through one hurdle last week when they settled on the Sept. 6 beginning date for hearings, but that deal almost fell through Friday after Kennedy and Schumer objected to the terms of the agreement that Leahy and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had reached for hearings and a full Senate vote -- arguing that Democrats were giving up too much. (The two Judiciary Committee leaders ultimately announced the Sept. 6 deal, with some modifications, Friday evening).

But even the most hard-line members of the Judiciary Committee said the Specter-Leahy rapport could work in both parties' favor.

"Relationships often trump party ideology. If people have a good personal relationship, that can transform everything, and apparently they do." Cornyn said.