Roberts the jovial grammarian

The more I read about Roberts, the more I like him. From the New York Times, we learn that Roberts is a careful writer with a love for language.

John G. Roberts Jr. could have easily ignored the letter from E. F. W. Wildermuth that came across his desk in December 1982. The correspondent, an octogenarian lawyer from New York, made an obscure procedural point about the Senate's jurisdiction based on his interpretation of the 17th Amendment; it was not the sort of question that would typically require serious attention from the White House counsel's office, where Mr. Roberts worked at the time.

But rather than dismiss the letter as the work of a curmudgeon, Mr. Roberts seized on it with delight.

Acknowledging that the White House usually ignored such mail, he wrote to his superior, Fred F. Fielding, the White House counsel, "Anyone who can quote inspiring passages from Plato and Webster, however, and use a word like 'slumgullion,' deserves a reply, and I have drafted one for your signature."

"Slumgullion" being, for the record, a thin stew.

It was a typical remark from a legal scholar who is said to have never lost a local spelling bee as a child and who once wrote an entire White House memorandum in French. In fact, an obsession with rhetorical precision is a central Roberts trait, said friends and former colleagues of the man nominated by President Bush to become a Supreme Court justice.

A cheerfully ruthless copy editor over the years, Judge Roberts has demanded verbal rigor from his colleagues and subordinates, refusing to tolerate the slightest grammatical slip, and boasting an exceptional vocabulary and command of literature himself.

Nowhere are Judge Roberts's tendencies as a grammarian more evident than in his memorandums from the Reagan era, when, as a lawyer in the counsel's office, he frequently peppered notes and documents with minor syntax corrections even when the basic legal arguments were sound. If Judge Roberts is confirmed, and his word-consciousness follows him to the court, it will put him in the upper tier of justices who have put a premium on the English language.

At a minimum, his arrival would add a formidable Scrabble talent to the bench.