The public had seen that John Roberts, the president’s nominee for chief justice of the Supreme Court, looked strong on paper – Harvard College and Harvard Law, clerkships for Henry Friendly and Supreme Court Associate Justice William Rehnquist, Office of the White House Counsel, Justice Department, U.S. Court of Appeals. With the first questions this week before the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, it also saw how good a thinker he was.

Opponents of the Roberts nomination have extensive writings from his work in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, from law journals and private practice. Democratic senators such as Patrick Leahy and Edward Kennedy used those writings to challenge the nominees’ views on, for instance, civil rights, judicial activism and the role of the judiciary regarding its view of the legislative branch. Republican Chairman Arlen Specter, surprisingly, quizzed Mr. Roberts on Roe v. Wade, the right to privacy and the role of precedent.

The president didn’t choose Mr. Roberts because he was a liberal. What those who do not reflexively support or oppose whatever course Mr. Bush chooses want to know is whether Mr. Roberts will use his knowledge and compassion to judge cases based on law and precedent – to call balls and strikes -without imposing an ideological slant. If the hearings yesterday were a fair indication, the answer was certainly that he would.

In responses to a wide range of questions, Mr. Roberts was both careful and clear. He easily parsed the difference between his own opinions and those of the administrations he represented. He gave thoughtful responses on key court cases, such as Brown v. the Board of Education, and politely corrected senators when he felt they had misrepresented his earlier arguments. When Sen. Leahy couldn’t help himself and worked into a question about the 2002 Bybee memo on torture that “no president is above the law,” Mr. Roberts slid by the question by agreeing with him that none was.

But the nominee went further with Sen. Specter’s question about a right to privacy – is it found in the law? This is something of a touchstone for conservatives who do not see it there. Mr. Roberts said he detected it in the Fourth Amendment and in the First, and that there was 80 years of decisions recognizing “that personal privacy is a component of the liberty protected by the due process clause.” And what about dismissing a precedent, such as Roe v. Wade? “I do think it is a jolt to the legal system when you overrule a precedent,” he said, and “it is not enough that you may think a prior decision was wrongly decided.”

These are reassuring words from a nominee who gives every indication of not using words loosely. If opponents were really listening, they would do well to save their protests for the president’s next Supreme Court pick.