Court Nominee’s Paper Trail Includes School Issues

Roberts Co-Wrote Briefs on Graduation Prayer, Desegregation, Title IX

Judge John G. Roberts Jr., President Bush’s pick for the U.S. Supreme Court, has dealt closely with some of the most controversial issues in education in his past work as an appellate advocate.

If confirmed to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, he would bring to the high court perhaps the greatest firsthand knowledge of the concerns of district-level educators of anyone since Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., who had served on both the Richmond, Va., school board and the Virginia state board of education before his service on the Supreme Court from 1971 to 1987.

“Among the names that were floated, I think he was the best candidate for schools,” Julie Underwood, the general counsel of the National School Boards Association, said of Judge Roberts. Before he became a federal appeals court judge in Washington in 2003, she noted, he had often participated at...