be more consistent with Supreme Court precedent." Appointment to Supreme Court On July 19, 2005, President Bush nominated Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court to fill a vacancy to be created by the impending retirement of justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Roberts's nomination was the first Supreme Court nomination since Stephen Breyer in 1994. On September 3, 2005, while Roberts's confirmation was pending before the Senate, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist died. Two days later, Bush withdrew Roberts's nomination as O'Connor's successor and announced Roberts's new nomination as Chief Justice. Roberts's testimony on his jurisprudence During his confirmation hearings, Roberts said that he did not have a comprehensive jurisprudential philosophy, and he did "not think beginning with an all-encompassing approach to constitutional interpretation is the best way to faithfully construe the document." Roberts compared judges to baseball umpires: "[I]t's my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat." Among the issues he discussed during the hearings were: Commerce Clause In Senate hearings, Roberts has stated: Federalism Roberts stated the following about federalism in a 1999 radio interview: Reviewing Acts of Congress At a Senate hearing, Roberts stated: Stare decisis On the subject of stare decisis, referring to Brown v. Board of Education, the decision overturning school segregation, Roberts said that "the Court in that case, of course, overruled a prior decision. I don't think that constitutes judicial activism because obviously if the decision is wrong, it should be overruled. That's not activism. That's applying the law correctly." Roe v. Wade While working as a lawyer for the Reagan Administration, Roberts wrote legal memos defending administration policies on abortion. At his nomination hearing Roberts testified that the legal memos represented the views of the administration he was representing at the time and not necessarily his own. "Senator, I was a staff lawyer; I didn't have a position," Roberts said. As a lawyer in the George H. W. Bush Administration, Roberts signed a legal brief urging the court to overturn Roe v. Wade. In private meetings with senators before his confirmation, Roberts testified that Roe was settled law, but added that it was subject to the legal principle of stare decisis, meaning that while the Court must give some weight to the precedent, it was not legally bound to uphold it. In his Senate testimony, Roberts said that, while sitting on the Appellate Court, he had an obligation to