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WASHINGTON - John Roberts had thought he'd be arriving at the Supreme Court this month as a new associate justice, ready to don a black robe and make history alongside his mentor, Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Instead, on Tuesday he helped carry Rehnquist's casket up the marble steps of the court.
Roberts, teary-eyed justices and a somber President Bush led a long line of Americans paying their last respects to the chief justice whose conservatism helped turn the high court toward the right over the past three decades.
The stone-faced Roberts was one of eight pallbearers who struggled at times to get Rehnquist's flag-draped casket into the court's Great Hall and onto the Lincoln Catafalque, the structure used for President Lincoln's coffin.
Rehnquist died Saturday at 80 after a battle with thyroid cancer, three days before the Senate Judiciary Committee was to take up Roberts' nomination to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Roberts would have become the first clerk to take the bench with his former boss.
Later on Tuesday, Bush, his head bowed, and first lady Laura Bush spent about a minute standing near the casket and a short time looking at the portrait of Rehnquist on a stand nearby. Justice Antonin Scalia escorted the couple.
Today, funeral services will be at 2 p.m. EDT at St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, open to friends and family. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney plan to attend, and Bush is to speak, along with O'Connor and Rehnquist family members.
Bush initially nominated Roberts, a federal appellate judge, to replace O'Connor, who announced in July that she would step down. The president said Monday that he would name Roberts to be the nation's 17th chief justice instead.
Flags, including the one above the court, were at half-staff in honor of Rehnquist, a President Nixon appointee who served on the court for 33 years and was elevated to chief justice in 1986 by President Reagan.
In an acknowledgment of the period of mourning, Roberts' confirmation hearings were delayed until Monday.
Bush and Senate Republicans are pushing to confirm Roberts before the new court session that begins Oct. 3. Democrats cautioned against a rush to judgment now that Roberts is a candidate for chief justice and at age 50, could shape the court for decades.
''I would hope all senators, Republicans and Democrats, would ask very substantive questions because this is, after all, a lifetime position,'' said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.
In a simple ceremony, six justices, along with former clerks and court staff lined the steps outside the court, awaiting the arrival of the hearse bearing Rehnquist's casket. Seven men and one woman - most of them former Rehnquist clerks - carried the casket past the line that included a crying O'Connor.
Absent were Justices Anthony Kennedy and David Souter.