Are there other criteria by which people line up for or against the Court's decisons, which have nothing to do with constitutional philosophy?

"There is a broad education to be gained in constitutional philosophy when one comes to the Supreme Court," he wrote.

His constitutional philosophy was so far from mainstream that the Senate voted no by a bipartisan 58 to 42.

It is really about the Administration's view that the nation requires a constitutional philosophy sharply different from the dominant philosophy of the last three decades.

But his past provides both a fully articulated constitutional philosophy and a great deal of guidance as to what kind of Justice he would be.

He has worked out an overarching legal and constitutional philosophy that he says should govern all judicial decision-making.

Douglas, a Western-state individualist, carved out a constitutional philosophy based on personal liberty.

He comes off as a tragic figure, who abandoned his liberal worldview out of fidelity to his constitutional philosophy.

"I do not have a fully developed constitutional philosophy," he said at his appeals court confirmation hearing last year.

"Judge Bork's constitutional philosophy," the report concluded, "places him at odds with this history and tradition."