WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court nominee John Roberts said Monday that justices are servants of the law, playing a limited government role, as the Senate opened confirmation hearings on President Bush's choice to be the nation's 17th chief justice.

"A certain humility should characterize the judicial role," the 50-year-old Roberts told the Judiciary Committee. "Judges and justices are servants of the law, not the other way around."

The appellate judge likened jurists to baseball umpires, saying that "they make sure everybody plays by the rules, but it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire."

The drama of Roberts' swearing-in and his short statement capped a half day in which Democrats and Republicans sparred over the legitimacy of questioning him about divisive issues. Arguments about ideology and judicial activism also marked the hours devoted to opening statements from the 18-member panel.

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Speaking without notes, Roberts addressed the committee for about six minutes — barely half the time each of the senators had been allotted for opening statements before he took the oath and made his remarks. He will answer questions from senators at much greater length on Tuesday.

"Judges have to have the humility to recognize that they operate in a system that precedent shaped by other judges equally striving to live up to the judicial oath," Roberts said. He said he appeared before the committee with "no agenda. I have no platform."

At age 50, Roberts could help shape the Supreme Court for a generation if confirmed to replace the late William H. Rehnquist. All questions, Democrats said, were fair game, and they promised to use the nearly weeklong hearings to ask Roberts about abortion, civil rights, privacy, election rights, capital punishment, judicial activism and the powers of the presidency and Congress.

Republicans advised Roberts to follow the example set by recent nominees to the high court and avoid responding to probing questions on controversial topics.

"Some have said that nominees who do not spill their guts about whatever a senator wants to know are hiding something from the American people," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "Some compare a nominee's refusal to violate his judicial oath or abandon judicial ethics to taking the Fifth Amendment. These might be catchy sound bites, but they are patently false."

"Don't take the bait," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin dismissed the notion that Republican calls for a dignified confirmation process barred senators from pursuing a line of questions of a lifetime appointee -- especially one Feingold described as looking healthy. That last part drew a smile from Roberts.

"If by dignified they mean that tough questions are out of bounds, I must strongly disagree," Feingold said.

Added Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois: "Only your responses to our questions can convince us that the John Roberts of 2005 will be a truly impartial, open-minded chief justice."

Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Judiciary Committee that conducted Monday's hearing, underscored the stakes for the Senate's vote on Roberts, an honors graduate from Harvard, a political appointee in two Republican administrations and a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for two years.

Roberts originally was chosen to succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. But Rehnquist's death prompted the president to renominate him for chief justice, replacing the man he clerked for in 1980.

"Your prospective stewardship of the court, which could last until 2040 or longer ... would present a very unique opportunity for a new chief justice to rebuild the image of the court away from what many believe it has become as a super-legislature and bring consensus to the court," Specter said.

The journey began for Roberts in the ornate Russell Senate Caucus Room. The day was devoted solely to opening statements — from the 17 men and one woman on the committee, the three senators chosen to introduce Roberts and from the nominee himself.

Roberts introduced members of his family: parents, siblings, his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, and his young children, Jack and Josie.

"You see she has a very tight grasp," Roberts said of his wife, who held the two children. An ebullient Jack Roberts had nearly upstaged his father when the president announced his nomination on July 19.

Democrats and Republicans saw few obstacles to Roberts' confirmation. In a Pew Research Center poll released Monday, 46 percent of those surveyed expressed support for Roberts' confirmation, up from 35 percent a week earlier.

How Roberts answers questions from the panel's 18 members about his record as a conservative lawyer in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations could affect the confirmation vote by the full Senate, expected before the end of September. The Supreme Court begins a new term Oct. 3.

Republicans warned Roberts against responding to "litmus-test questions."

Abortion and the 1973 Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade that legalized the procedure loomed large.

"Perhaps the Supreme Court's most notorious exercise of raw political power came in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, two 1973 cases which invented a constitutional right to abortion," said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.

Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the only woman on the committee, said in her prepared statement that she planned to ask Roberts about "the constitutional right to privacy" as it deals with abortion rights.

"I am concerned by a trend on the court to limit this right and curtail women's autonomy," Feinstein said. "It would be very difficult for me to vote to confirm someone to the Supreme Court whom I knew would overturn Roe v. Wade."

The White House has released more than 70,000 documents from Roberts' time in the Reagan administration but has refused to release documents from his tenure as principal deputy solicitor general in the first Bush administration.

Seventeen Democratic senators, including potential presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and John Kerry of Massachusetts, reiterated the party's call for the Bush administration to release those documents.

"The people deserve to know the complete truth about Judge Roberts, the good and the bad alike," they said in a letter to the White House.