Followers of the Supreme Court have predicted that new Chief Justice John Roberts would push a conservative agenda. Some are happy that conservatives might finally rule the court; others worry about a conservative impact on civil rights.

We’ve seen Roberts’ conservative side when he protected the government’s right to deny funds to universities that will not allow the military to recruit on campus. We’ve also seen him argue that the federal government should be allowed to trump the state government when it comes to the medical use of marijuana.

But, people concerned about civil rights can take comfort from other, less visible actions of the chief justice.

Recently, some subtle “certiorari” actions by Roberts have highlighted the fact that this is an independent, thoughtful jurist who cares about both separation of powers and civil rights.

When parties want a case heard by the Supreme Court they file a petition for certiorari. It takes four justices to “accept cert” to bring a case before the court.

Because the Supreme Court accepts cert in only about 1 percent of cases, judicial acceptance of a case shapes the law. Judges can express a political view simply by avoiding or accepting cases, and alliances between and among judges can sometimes be viewed through their opinions about accepting cert.

One of the lesser known but important factors of certiorari is the “cert pool.” The Supreme Court receives thousands of applications for cert and the justices find it difficult to keep up with all the requests. So, several decades ago, a cert pool was formed made up of the justices’ clerks. Rather than each justice’s clerk writing memos about every potential case, the cases were divided among the clerks and the memos were shared by the justices.

The cert pool has been criticized because it can create a “herd” mentality about which cases ought to receive cert. But, it has also been praised because it can cut down on the politics of the acceptance of cert. If a clerk is writing a memo, that memo will be relied on by justices across the legal/political spectrum. Many argue that clerks work hard to make their cert pool memos less political than memos they might write to one specific judge.

To date, only Justice John Paul Stevens has refrained from joining the pool, and Roberts has been watched carefully to see whether he would make use of the pool, ignore the pool or institute changes. At the moment, Roberts is using the pool, but he has also suggested some reforms that would continue to cut down on the politics of certiorari.

Roberts has voted to accept cert in a number of business cases, but he has also voted to accept cases relating to civil rights, including the death penalty, which came as a surprise to some court watchers. Even more surprising, though, was Roberts’ action in a recent denial of cert.

In Padilla v. Hanft (denied cert three weeks ago), Roberts took an opportunity to warn the government that civil rights should not be diluted, even in an age of terrorism.

Padilla is an American citizen detained by the U.S. military as an enemy combatant. He brought a habeas corpus petition in federal court.

Habeas corpus rights are violated when we are held by the government without being charged with a crime.

Padilla was detained in 2002; charges were not filed until 2005. However, before his case was heard by the Supreme Court, the government did charge him with specific crimes. At that point, at the Supreme Court level, cert was denied because most of the justices found the case was moot — once the government had filed charges, the habeas corpus issue was no longer relevant.

But, in an unusual move, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote an opinion explaining that if the government were to change the conditions of Padilla’s custody, lower courts and the Supreme Court should all move quickly to ensure “that the office and purposes of the writ of habeas corpus are not compromised.” In an even more unusual move, Chief Justice Roberts signed on to Kennedy’s opinion.

Columbia law professor Michael Dorf suggests that Roberts was consciously establishing his independence from the Bush administration.

True, cert was denied so this civil rights matter didn’t come before the court. But, at the same time, Roberts’ attention to the “politics of cert” demonstrates that he is aware of the court’s unique role in protecting separation of powers and civil rights.