Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg acknowledged as much moments later, when she solemnly read a statement from the bench explaining her dissent.

The majority opinion, she told a stone-silent courtroom, "cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this court -- and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives."

The federal law bans a procedure used in a limited number of midterm abortions, but the court's decision will probably have an immediate effect on U.S. politics and lawmaking.

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The decision is especially significant because the court had rejected in 2000 a Nebraska law aimed at banning what opponents call "partial birth" abortion, because it lacked an exception for preserving the health of the woman. That five-member majority included all of yesterday's dissenters, plus then-Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. With Alito taking her place and approving the federal ban, the majority has shifted. Antiabortion activists now see the makings of a court they have longed for. "It is just a matter of time before the infamous Roe v. Wade . . . will also be struck down by the court," predicted Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America. "The impact of Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement is painfully clear," said Nancy Northrup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, adding: "It took just a year for this new court to overturn three decades of established constitutional law."

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered Bush administration environmental officials to reconsider their refusal to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions, giving a boost to advocates of stronger action against global warming. The justices, voting 5-4, today said the Environmental Protection Agency didn't follow the requirements of the Clean Air Act in 2003 when it opted not to order cuts in carbon emissions from new cars and trucks.

"EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. The ruling doesn't necessarily mean the EPA will have to impose new regulations. Still, it adds to growing pressure on the administration, which has resisted mandatory limits on carbon emissions. The decision is a setback for General Motors Corp. and other automakers and for utilities with coal-fired plants, including American Electric Power Co. and Southern Co.

Environmentalists and 12 states, including California and Massachusetts, are seeking to force the federal agency to limit emissions from new cars and trucks. New York is leading a separate state effort to curb power-plant emissions. The decision also bolsters efforts by California and other states to enact their own climate-change regulations. In challenging those rules, automakers have pointed to the EPA's conclusion that carbon dioxide isn't an "air pollutant" subject to federal and state regulation under the U.S. Clean Air Act.

The majority today rejected the agency's conclusion. "Greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act's capacious definition of 'air pollutant,'" Stevens wrote.

--Do states have the right to sue the EPA to challenge its decision?

--Does the Clean Air Act give EPA the authority to regulate tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases?

--Does EPA have the discretion not to regulate those emissions?

The court said yes to the first two questions. On the third, it ordered EPA to re-evaluate its contention that it has the discretion not to regulate tailpipe emissions. The court said the agency has so far provided a "laundry list" of reasons that include foreign policy considerations.

With the new chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr., in dissent in the most high-profile case since he joined the court, the decision lifted a major barrier to state initiatives like the one in Oregon, which has the only assisted-suicide law in the country.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion did not say that Congress could not act to block such laws, only that it had not given Mr. Ashcroft the "extraordinary authority" that he claimed when he threatened Oregon doctors who followed the state law with losing their federal prescription-writing privileges.

While the court's decision was based on standard principles of administrative law, and not on the Constitution, it was clearly influenced by the majority's view that the regulation of medical practice belonged, as a general matter, to the states. Mr. Ashcroft acted contrary to "the background principles of our federal system," Justice Kennedy said in his 28-page opinion

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Oregon voters approved the Death With Dignity Act in 1994 and affirmed it 1997. The law says that doctors who follow specific procedures may prescribe lethal doses of federally regulated medications to help their mentally competent, terminally ill patients end their lives. Through 2004, 325 people had obtained the lethal prescriptions, and 208 had used them

It's pretty clear where Alito is headed on abortion rights. He refused to say whether he agreed with the characterization of the 1973 Roe ruling as "settled law," that couldn’t be re-examined. Now that the GOP is within striking distance of overturning Roe, they're having second thoughts. The public is not ready to abandon the landmark case legalizing abortion, and neither is the Republican Party. They used abortion as a wedge issue because the politics worked; they really didn't think abortion would ever be banned. "Any activist will tell you they'd rather have the issue out there than to have it resolved," says this pro-choice Republican, who has worked on the Hill and for various Republican interest groups. "If Roe were overturned, we'd be electing Democrats as far as the eye can see."

For example, after Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., quizzed Alito on his participation in the group Concerned Alumni of Princeton - a group criticized for its opposition to increased enrollment of women and minorities at Princeton University - Hatch came to Alito's rescue. He pointed out Alito was not a founder of the group, nor was he a board member.

"Let me just ask you directly, on the record," Hatch said, winding up for the big pitch. "Are you against women and minorities attending colleges?" Spectators chuckled at the question. Leahy razzed the Utah senator: "Tough question, Orrin." On the record, Alito said he did not oppose minority or women enrollment. "You know, I felt that that would be your answer. I really did," Hatch said

In a 1985 job application, Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. expressed his strong belief that the Constitution does not protect abortion and stated his opposition to "racial and ethnic quotas."

Alito, President Bush's nominee to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, made the statements in an application for a political appointment to a top Justice Department post in the Reagan administration. Then an assistant to the solicitor general in the administration, he was applying to be deputy assistant attorney general, a job he eventually obtained two years later.

Asked on the application form to explain his "philosophical commitment to the policies of this administration," Alito wrote on an attached sheet, "I am and always have been a conservative and an adherent to the same philosophical views that I believe are central to this Administration."

It was "an honor and a source of personal satisfaction" to help advance Reagan administration legal positions "in which I personally believe very strongly," Alito wrote. "I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

Gallup said that about the same number of Americans rate Alito's selection either excellent or good (43%) as rate it fair or poor (39%). Harriet Miers initially received a very similar rating, but John Roberts' rating was more positive: 51% excellent or good, 34% fair or poor.

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--"If it becomes clear Alito would vote to reverse the abortion ruling Roe v. Wade, Americans would not want the Senate to confirm him, by 53% to 37%."

--"If most Senate Democrats oppose the nomination and decide to filibuster against Alito, 50% of Americans believe they would be justified, while 40% say they would not."

Gallup said results are based on telephone interviews with 603 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Nov. 1, 2005, with sampling error at ±4 percentage points.

According to a statement released by the White House this morning, Judge Alito was born in April 1950 in Trenton. He graduated from Princeton University in 1972, and went to Yale Law School, where he earned a J.D. in 1975. From 1977-1980, Judge Alito served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the appellate division, where he argued cases before the circuit court to which he was later appointed.

From 1981 to 1985, Judge Alito served as assistant to the solicitor general. He has argued 12 cases on behalf of the federal government in the United States Supreme Court and he has argued numerous others before the federal courts of appeals.

His career included serving as deputy assistant to the attorney general from 1985 to 1987. From 1987 to 1989, Judge Alito served as United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, where he prosecuted white collar and environmental crimes, drug trafficking, organized crime, and violations of civil rights, the White House said.

"The radical right wing of the Republican Party killed the Harriet Miers nomination. Apparently, Ms. Miers did not satisfy those who want to pack the Supreme Court with rigid ideologues."

"I had recommended that the President consider nominating Ms. Miers because I was impressed with her record of achievement as the managing partner of a major Texas law firm and the first woman president of the Texas Bar Association. In those roles she was a strong supporter of law firm diversity policies and a leader in promoting legal services for the poor. But these credentials are not good enough for the right wing: they want a nominee with a proven record of supporting their skewed goals."

"In choosing a replacement for Ms. Miers, President Bush should not reward the bad behavior of his right wing base. He should reject the demands of a few extremists and choose a justice who will protect the constitutional rights of all Americans."

Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers pledged support in 1989 for a constitutional amendment banning abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, according to material given to the Senate on Tuesday.

"If Congress passes a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution that would prohibit abortion except when it was necessary to prevent the death of the mother, would you actively support its ratification by the Texas Legislature," asked an April 1989 questionnaire sent out by the Texans United for Life group.

Miers checked "yes" to that question, and all of the group's questions, including whether she would oppose the use of public moneys for abortions and whether she would use her influence to keep "pro-abortion" people off city health boards and commissions.

OCTOBER 12--Sure, nobody seems to know anything about Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers's judicial philosophy, abortion position, or conservative bona fides. But here's something not open for debate: the old gal loves exclamation points and seemed to enjoy writing gushy notes to then-Governor George W. Bush. Below you'll find copies of personal correspondence exchanged between Bush and Miers from 1995-2000 (before migrating to Washington, Miers headed the Texas State Lottery Commission, a post to which Bush appointed her).

In a 1997 Hallmark greeting card (adorned with a photo of a dog), Miers sent along belated birthday wishes and noted that "You are the best governor ever--deserving of great respect!" In another note (penned on an American Greetings card), Miers wrote that she hoped Bush's daughters realized that their parents were "cool." A 1995 Miers note thanked Bush for a visit, adding that an airplane ride with the governor was "Cool!" Sadly, the document dump did not include Miers's e-mail or IM messages, which are surely filled with loads of sappy emoticons.

On a radio show being broadcast Wednesday, Dobson said he discussed Miers with Rove on Oct. 1, two days before her nomination was announced. Dobson said Rove told him "she is from a very conservative church, which is almost universally pro-life," but denied he had gotten any assurances from the White House that she would vote to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

Dobson said Rove told him that Miers had been a member of Texas Right to Life. White House press secretary Scott McClellan said she was not a member of the organization "that I'm aware of." "My understanding is that she attended some events, some fund-raising events that they had," McClellan said.

Miers bought a $150 ticket to a 1989 fund-raising dinner for another anti-abortion group — Texans United for Life — according to the president of the group, now called the Texans for Life Coalition.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said: "The rest of America, including the Senate, deserves to know what he and the White House know. We don’t confirm Justices of the Supreme Court on a wink and a nod. And a litmus test is no less a litmus test by using whispers and signals," the Vermont senator said. "No political faction should be given a monopoly of relevant knowledge about a nomination, just as no faction should be permitted to hound a nominee to withdraw, before the hearing process has even begun."

One of Miers' jobs as White House counsel was to judge the judges, including the search that ended with the Roberts pick. According to a presidential adviser who has been briefed on the chronology of the decision, senior adviser Karl Rove was less involved than he is in most major decisions. Some conservatives speculate that Rove was distracted or out of the loop because of his possible legal jeopardy in the CIA leak case, but White House officials reject that notion. The driving force was chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr., who took over the vetting role. "This is something that Andy and the President cooked up," the adviser told TIME. "Andy knew it would appeal to the President because he loves appointing his own people and being supersecret and stealthy about it." Relations between Rove and Card have always been strained, and this adviser said the nomination has reignited the tension. Another Republican involved said it reflected Bush's isolation. "Somebody just like her should have told him, "Mr. President, no. This is a mistake." But he picked the picker, so there was no one there to tell him no."

"My theory is that she is going to be a Justice very much like Sandra Day O'Connor," says Gary Rice, in words that might cheer moderates but spook anyone looking for someone with a weed whacker who will go after liberal rulings of the past 30 years. "If she moves the law, it will be in small steps. She won't be one to say, 'Let's just throw all that out and do something different.'" One of the most intriguing insights into the Real Harriet Miers came from her longtime friend, former law partner and sometime love interest Justice Nathan Hecht, who is considered the most conservative justice on the Texas Supreme Court. "This is very important, and I don't think the public understands," he told TIME. "When you take an oath and swear that you will judge cases properly after that, you can't inject your personal views or religious faith into decisions because it would be wrong. You would either be a bad Christian or a bad judge. Religion says a lot about who you are personally, but it says nothing about stare decisis [following precedent], the commerce clause, the First Amendment, search and seizure or any of the issues she's going to deal with." All of which will surely leave some Christian activists wondering, What's the good of having the first Evangelical on the bench if she leaves her faith in the robing room?

As political activists rush to mine Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers' slender public record, a former campaign manager says she opposed abortion rights while running for Dallas City Council in 1989. "She is on the extreme end of the anti-choice movement," said Lorlee Bartos, who managed Ms. Miers' first and only political campaign and said they discussed abortion once during the race. "I think Harriet's belief was pretty strongly felt," Ms. Bartos said Monday. "I suspect she is of the same cloth as the president."

*****

Ms. Bartos said Ms. Miers was supportive of abortion rights in her youth. She said Ms. Miers then underwent "a born-again, profound experience" that caused her to oppose abortion.

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Ron Key, who has been Ms. Miers' pastor since the early 1980s, said his church is anti-abortion. Mr. Key, who recently left Valley View Christian Church to found a new church with Ms. Miers and others, stopped short, however, of saying that those beliefs would color her approach to the law.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said he urged President George W. Bush today to delay nominating a replacement for retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said he talked to Justice O'Connor about staying on the high court. "She's prepared to do that" through the court's term ending in June, Specter said. The president "was noncommittal," Specter said. "The body language was not very positive," Specter said.

Specter said the delay would give Congress and the rest of America more time to know John Roberts as chief justice. "When we know a little more about Judge Roberts it's going to be easier with the next" nomination, Specter said.

I am unconvinced that Judge Roberts accepts the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling as settled law," Bloomberg said. Roberts' answers to questions in Senate confirmation hearings "did not indicate a commitment to protect a woman's right to choose," he said. "For that reason I oppose the nomination of Judge Roberts as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court."

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Bloomberg, who became a billionaire by building the media company named after him, is ahead in polls in the New York mayoral race ahead of November's election here. Like many Republicans in New York, Bloomberg has long been a liberal on social issues and has been unafraid to publicly break with President George W. Bush.

"As the only woman on the committee," she said, she had a special job to make sure that the "hard-earned autonomy" of women is protected. She traced the history of the rights of women, noting how long it has taken for those rights to be secured in the workforce and how women have had to "fight their way" into traditional fields.

"For me ... one of the most important issues that needs to be addressed by you is the constitutional right to privacy." She said she was concerned by a trend on the court to restrict that right. "It would be very difficult for me to vote to confirm someone whom I knew would overturn Roe v. Wade."

Unlike younger women, she said, she remembers the days of "back alley abortions." She said she knew a woman who committed suicide because of an inability to get an abortion. "I don't want to go back to those days," she said.

What happened? In a nutshell, Roberts' record happened. The release of documents from the Ronald Reagan library have shed light on Roberts' time as associate counsel to Reagan and as deputy solicitor general under Kenneth Starr during the Reagan and first Bush administrations. We've now been able to read Roberts' writings on the subject of equal pay for women for jobs of "comparable value," which he called in a 1984 memo "a radical redistributive concept." There is his repeated use of the term "so-called" with regard to the right to privacy. He also writes of the "purported gender gap," and "perceived problems of gender discrimination." In the early 1990s, Roberts voluntarily argued for the government in front of the Supreme Court on the side of abortion clinic protesters in the Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic case. And in a 1985 memo he made a crack about housewives becoming lawyers that may have been a housewife joke, or may have been a lawyer joke, but either way was not a knee-slapper.

Before the Roberts record began to embolden progressives to take a strong stand against the nominee, some pro-choice groups were alone in fiercely opposing him, and NARAL's stumble earned them the back of the hand from some (mostly male) Democrats. The popular blogger Daily Kos (Markos Moulitsas Zuniga) enraged feminist bloggers like Jessica Valenti (Feministing) and Amanda Marcotte (Pandagon) when he blogged, in the midst of the NARAL fuss, not about the ad, but about his frustrations with NARAL's "single issue" politics, and their single-minded devotion to what he called a "pet cause."

Arguing on behalf of the government for a roll back of abortion rights, Roberts has stated that there is "no support in the text, structure or history of the Constitution" for Roe v. Wade. Roberts wrote the government's brief in Rust v. Sullivan, the 1991 case in which the Supreme Court held that government could prohibit doctors and clinics who receive federal funds from discussing abortion with their patients. In his brief, Roberts said: "We continue to believe that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overruled."

A working draft of Iraq's new constitution would cede a strong role to Islamic law and could sharply curb women's rights, particularly in personal matters like divorce and family inheritance.

The document's writers are also debating whether to drop or phase out a measure enshrined in the interim constitution, co-written last year by the Americans, requiring that women make up at least a quarter of the parliament.

"I want to put to rest the speculation and unfounded rumors of my imminent retirement," said Rehnquist, 80, who is battling thyroid cancer. "I am not about to announce my retirement. I will continue to perform my duties as chief justice as long as my health permits."

Rehnquist's statement, initially issued today by his family and later confirmed by court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg, marks his first public comment about his plans since he disclosed in October that he had thyroid cancer. The statement came eight hours after Rehnquist was released from a Virginia hospital where he was treated for a fever.

Cancer experts have said Rehnquist's treatments -- chemotherapy, radiation and a tracheotomy -- suggest he may have anaplastic thyroid cancer, an especially aggressive form of the disease. Rehnquist hasn't disclosed his type of thyroid cancer.

O'Connor, who plans to step down after 24 years, was the most business-friendly justice on the nine-member court. She voted to cut punitive damages, curb class-action lawsuits and enforce arbitration agreements against consumers. "As somebody who stands at the podium regularly on behalf of business, I always thought I had a sympathetic ear in Justice O'Connor," says Carter G. Phillips, a Washington lawyer with Sidley Austin Brown & Wood who has 45 Supreme Court arguments to his credit.

That may not hold true for O'Connor's replacement. Social conservatives, focused on such issues as abortion and gay marriage, want President George W. Bush to appoint a justice along the lines of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Their rule-oriented approach to the law often leads them to dismiss the more pragmatic concerns of businesses.

In business cases that divided the court over the past six terms, Scalia and Thomas opposed the views of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce twice as often as O'Connor did. In the 2002-03 term alone, Scalia and Thomas rejected business positions in cases involving Norfolk Southern Corp., Nike Inc., State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry. "Social conservatives admire Justices Scalia and Thomas, but Justices O'Connor and Kennedy have been much better for business interests," says Walter Dellinger, a Washington lawyer and Duke University law professor who was the Clinton administration's top Supreme Court lawyer. "Pragmatism works well for business. Ideology often does not."

By a 5-to-4 vote, the court overturned state liquor laws in New York and Michigan that gave preferential treatment to in-state wineries. Both states permit in-state wineries to ship directly to consumers, bypassing both retailers and wholesalers.

Michigan prohibited direct shipment by out-of-state wineries while New York nominally permitted it for out-of-state wineries that maintain a New York office, a requirement that no out-of-state winery has met and that the majority on Monday found so financially burdensome for small wineries as to amount to a prohibition.

In his majority opinion, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said both states were engaging in the kind of protectionism that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution forbids and that the 21st Amendment does not excuse. The 21st Amendment repealed Prohibition and granted the states much leeway in regulating alcohol. But "state regulation of alcohol is limited by the nondiscrimination principle of the Commerce Clause," Justice Kennedy said.