Well I have to say as someone whose family is in the civil service and as someone who worked in it myself for awhile (and really this is true not just for government work but in the private sector as well) when you're performing your duties as an employee or official, it's not your job to push some personal agenda. It's your job to formulate or implement policy.

What I see in those statements by Roberts is a man working on behalf of a conservative president, making advisements as to what he - in his capacity as an administration lawyer - saw as being in the best interests of that administration. His job as a lawyer is to represent his client, who was in this situation the Reagan Admin. And so that's the perspective from which I personally see those comments as having come.

So I don't necessarily see any hypocrisy or even prejudice there. I see him thinking about the best interests of the people he represents and performing the duties of the position he had.