Humility isn't a characteristic usually associated with powerful government officials. But it's a key trait for a judge to fulfill his proper constitutional role, according to Supreme Court nominee John Roberts.

In his view, Congress makes the law, the executive branch executes the law, and it is the job of judges to provide judgment - nothing more.

Now, with his confirmation hearings set to begin next Tuesday, one of the big questions looming over Mr. Roberts's nomination is how this philosophy of restraint will translate should major liberal precedents like abortion and affirmative action once again face Supreme Court review.

Will he uphold existing legal precedents despite possible disagreements with earlier court decisions? Or will he use his power as a life-tenured justice to enforce a more conservative reading of constitutional law?

If Roberts and his White House handlers are successful, no clear answers to such questions will emerge during his confirmation hearings. Instead, senators will be left with little more than a vague notion of how he might vote in specific cases.

The tactic is deliberate. It helps insulate the nominee from the toughest questions. But it is primarily designed to protect the independence of the judiciary by avoiding any appearance that a prospective justice is promising to rule in a certain way in specific cases in exchange for Senate support.

The tactic can be a great source of frustration for senators and members of the public worried about certain legal precedents being overturned. But there are signs that Roberts's views on judicial restraint are deeply held and of long standing.

Judges "do not have a commission to solve society's problems, as they see them, but simply to decide cases before them according to the rule of law," Roberts wrote in August to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Roberts is no stranger to Supreme Court confirmation hearings. As a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, he helped Sandra Day O'Connor prepare for her Senate questioning.

He described the strategy in a 1981 memo: "The approach was to avoid giving specific responses to any direct questions on legal issues likely to come before the court, but demonstrating in the response a firm command of the subject area and awareness of the relevant precedents and arguments."

Roberts adopted the same strategy in 2003 during his confirmation hearings to the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.

"My own judicial philosophy begins with an appreciation of the limited role of a judge in our system of divided government," he wrote in response to Senate questions two years ago. Roberts even used the same word that he is using now - humility - to describe his approach.

Working as a judge "requires an essential humility grounded in the properly limited role of an undemocratic judiciary in a democratic republic," he said.

The essence of the conservative push for judicial restraint is that under the American system of checks and balances there is no check on unelected, life-tenured judges abusing their power when straying from the limiting text of the Constitution. The only restraint in this area is judicial self-restraint, they say.

Liberals disagree with this view. They say the Constitution is a living document, flexible enough to accommodate expansive rulings in response to contemporary problems.

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