http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/08/19/roberts_as_reagan_aide_backed_national_id_card/Roberts, as Reagan aide, backed national ID card
Trove of judge's papers released
By Charlie Savage and Rick Klein, Globe Staff | August 19, 2005
WASHINGTON -- As a legal aide in the Reagan administration in 1983,
Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. declared that he would
support creating a national identification card in order to combat
"the real threat to our social fabric posed by uncontrolled
immigration," a memo released yesterday by the National Archives
revealed.
In a memo that offered new insight into how he might rule on cases
that test the balance between national security and civil liberties,
Roberts said he "yield to no one in the area of commitment to
individual liberty against the spectre of overreaching central
authority." However, he wrote, "We already have, for all intents and
purposes, a national identifier -- the Social Security number -- and
making it in form what it has become in fact will not suddenly mean
Constitutional protections would evaporate and you could be
arbitrarily stopped on the street and asked to produce it."
The memo, written to his boss, White House counsel Fred Fielding, was
among nearly 39,000 pages of documents released yesterday from
Roberts's tenure as an associate White House lawyer. The documents
revealed Roberts's opinions on social and legal issues including the
First Amendment, the role of judges, and programs intended to bring
equality to women in the workplace.
more...The papers go on reveal much, much more.