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Washington – It was in the fall of her sophomore year in high school that Christine Franklin’s economics teacher allegedly asked her what she liked to do in private with her boyfriend.

Over the next two years, the teacher’s remarks grew sexually explicit, she said in a federal complaint. He pawed Christine and kissed her. Ultimately, he allegedly took her from class and forced her to have sex with him.

Franklin sued her Georgia school district under Title IX, which prohibits sexual discrimination against women in schools, claiming sexual harassment.

In 1990, the suit reached the desk of John Roberts, who was then the deputy to U.S. Solicitor General Ken Starr.

Starr and Roberts took a narrow view of the federal law; they intervened and urged the Supreme Court to dismiss the young woman’s pleas.

The court rejected their vision of the law. In a 9-0 ruling, even the most conservative justices – Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas – recognized Franklin’s right to sue.

Roberts’ argument in the Franklin case is one of dozens of matters due for scrutiny as the U.S. Senate launches hearings on his fitness to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Those hearings are slated to begin Tuesday. It was not clear late Saturday whether the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist will lead to a postponement of the hearings.

Barring such a delay, it’s likely that with Republicans in control of the Senate, Roberts, a 50-year-old federal appellate judge, will be confirmed in time to join the high court when it starts its new term in the first week of October.

Of Colorado’s senators, Republican Wayne Allard supports Roberts; Democrat Ken Salazar has not said how he’ll vote.

But several major liberal, civil rights and women’s groups declared their opposition to the nominee last week.

And thousands of newly released letters, memos and other documents from Roberts’ years of service in the Reagan and first Bush administrations reveal him as a very conservative person.

The Roberts portrayed in those pages was an ardent foe of abortion who scorned the “so-called” right of privacy that is the bedrock for the court’s decision in Roe vs. Wade, and urged it to be overturned.

Roberts opposed affirmative action for women and minorities.

He sought to restrict the ability of individuals and conservation groups to enforce environmental laws. He endorsed legislation that would strip the federal courts of their power to fight school segregation or hear school-prayer cases.

“On women’s rights, civil rights, the right to privacy and the role of the courts, Judge Roberts has consistently staked out positions that cast doubt on whether he understands how the law affects ordinary Americans,” said Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, a coalition of liberal groups.

Roberts’ backers offer no apologies for the judge’s conservative beliefs. Indeed, they herald them.

“If confirmed, Roberts will benefit the country by not being a judicial activist,” said Sean Rushton, spokesman for the Committee for Justice, in a statement responding to the liberal groups’ objections.

“Roberts won’t allow bureaucrats to seize ordinary people’s private property,” Rushton said. “He won’t redefine traditional marriage. He won’t strike ‘under God’ from the Pledge of Allegiance. He won’t force the Boy Scouts to hire openly homosexual scoutmasters. He won’t favor criminals’ rights over victims’ rights.

“He won’t protect simulated child pornography on the Internet. He won’t allow Congress to legislate in areas where the Constitution doesn’t grant it authority. He won’t ban the death penalty. He won’t permit the politicians to regulate what we say about them at election time.

“He won’t allow government to treat people differently because of their skin color. He won’t hamstring the military and intelligence services in the war on terror. He won’t block school choice for kids in failing schools. He won’t eliminate the right to gun ownership.”

In his confirmation hearings, Roberts is sure to be grilled about abortion, privacy, separation of church and state, gay rights and other highly contentious issues, and explain his views about more obscure but as important matters as the reach of the Constitution’s “commerce clause,” which serves as a foundation of federal regulatory authority.

His foes will seek to portray Roberts as an extremist – more personable and presentable but as rigid in his thinking as Robert Bork, the conservative legal theorist and judge whose nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate in 1987.

And Roberts will try to deflect such attacks with the smarts and poise he earned at Harvard and Harvard Law School, in years of government service and during dozens of arguments as a lawyer before the Supreme Court.

Ultimately, Roberts’ fate may rest with how voters, especially woman voters, believe he will handle cases like those of Christine Franklin.

Does America want a justice with expansive – or constrained – views of the Constitution and the rights it guarantees?

The ideological scrutiny is fair game, no less an authority than the young John Roberts has said.

“The Senate is free under the Constitution to consider whatever it cares to consider in voting for a nominee,” he wrote in 1986.