Young lawyers vote Roberts a judicial 'hottie'

WASHINGTON — Would a Justice John G. Roberts Jr. be the Supreme Hunk?

President Bush's nominee to the nation's top court has already been voted Number 5 on the "Hotties of the Bench" list put out by Underneath Their Robes, a web blog featuring "news, gossip and colorful commentary about the federal judiciary."

"Judge Roberts is looking super-hunky tonight, much younger than his 50 years," a blogger called Article III Groupie wrote in during the televised White House appointment. "His hair is neatly shorn (although is that a tiny bald spot at the top?), and the adorable dimple in his chin is making A3G dizzy."

Article III of the U.S. Constitution, the source of the A3G moniker, deals with the Supreme Court and federal judiciary.

Issuing a dissenting opinion, the Wonkette, online gossipmeister of the nation's capital, declared that Judge Roberts "looks like Pat Sajak."

Underneath Their Robes' Number 1 male judicial "Superhottie" was Judge Alex Kozinski, who sits on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and has also been mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee. "Please put me down for Judge Kozinski – he's the bomb," e-mailed one young lawyer.

On the female side, U.S. District Judge Kimba Woods was voted tops among the "Bodacious Babes of the Bench." Then-president Bill Clinton nominated Woods to be attorney general but she withdrew because of a "nanny problem" involving unpaid taxes.

A young law clerk, who had interviewed for a position with Woods, e-mailed in that she is a "total superhottie. I could barely concentrate! Maybe that is why she rejected me."

UTR – www.underneaththeirrobes.blogs.com — describes itself as "a combination of People, US Weekly, Page Six, The National Enquirer and Tigerbeat, focused not on vacuous movie stars or fatuous teen idols, but on federal judges."

Its readers are largely young lawyers and, especially, federal law clerks.

It is run by Article III Groupie, who says she "graduated from an Ivy League college in the mid-1990s and a top five law school in the late-1990s."

After clerking for a federal appeals court judge, she said she "had multiple Supreme Court clerkship interviews, but they ended in tragedy (i.e., with her not getting a job with the Supremes)."

Now she works for a big city law firm but says her "goal in life is to become a federal judicial diva."