OF THE MANY LAWYERS under consideration for nomination to the seat vacated by Sandra Day O’Connor, only one, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, is drawing substantially negative reviews from conservatives. Of course, it’s understandable why Gonzales is on the president’s short list. Bush first hired him years ago and has held him in such high regard as to appoint him to a series of important jobs–even, years ago, to a judgeship on the Texas Supreme Court. In an interview in USA Today, Bush called Gonzales “a great friend of mine.” Bush also likes to make diversity history, so to speak, and, having already given us, in Gonzales, the nation’s first ever Hispanic attorney general, he could now decide to make him our first ever Hispanic justice.

Yet for Gonzales to be on the short list, he presumably would have to be the kind of lawyer the president has said he wants to name to the Court–one whose approach to judging would be similar to those of Justices Scalia and Thomas. Here is the source of the conservative wariness toward a Justice Gonzales, for it is not apparent to many conservatives that Gonzales measures up in that rather urgent respect.