WASHINGTON — Even if U.S. District Judge William E. Smith pledges to follow judicial precedent as a member of a powerful federal appeals court, he could go back on his word once he gets the lifetime job, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse suggested last week.

“You’ve got to make sure that the guy’s not a stalking horse for Bush ideology,” Whitehouse said of Smith, whom the president has nominated to a vacancy on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “That’s an issue that needs to be put to rest,” said Whitehouse, who could play a decisive role in whether Smith is elevated to the Boston-based court.

Supporters of Smith, including the man he would replace, senior Judge Bruce M. Selya, have presented him as a moderate jurist who has built a solid reputation since the Senate confirmed him to Rhode Island’s federal court in 2002. Republican Smith, a labor lawyer with ties to former Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee, won the approval of the Democrat-controlled Senate without any dissent.

Selya has called for senators to evaluate Smith on his record of five years on the District Court. Whitehouse said Mr. Bush’s record of pushing the judiciary to the political right “raises the bar” for all his nominees, including Smith.

Whitehouse said he looks at Smith in a different way than he otherwise would have done because Mr. Bush employed “the most contentious and unhelpful way possible” to nominate the judge. The administration made only cursory attempts at the customary consultations with senators over the appointment, according to Whitehouse and Sen. Jack Reed, a fellow Democrat, who said Smith has served well in his five years on the state’s federal court.

Whitehouse went further, charging that Mr. Bush’s nominees to the Supreme Court have violated pledges, made prior to their confirmation by the Senate, to honor judicial precedents. Therefore, Whitehouse reasoned, there is an argument for rejecting Smith’s nomination, no matter what Smith says as the Senate considers whether to elevate him to the appeals court.

Under the Constitution, the president nominates judges to the federal courts, with the advice and consent of the Senate. Whitehouse said that Mr. Bush, more than other presidents, has “claimed a higher prerogative” to select federal appellate judges who are attuned to his political views. Whitehouse said the Bush administration has “really degraded the role of the Senate” by claiming that appeals court choices are “its call and its call alone.”

Whitehouse depicted that general pattern as the context for his determination to scrutinize the possibility that Smith is a “stalking horse for the Bush ideology.”

In this sense, the debate over Smith’s 1st Circuit nomination reflects the fact that federal appeals courts have much more power to interpret the law than lower federal courts. The Supreme Court hears only a fraction of appeals from the nation’s circuit courts, so those appellate panels are often the last word on difficult constitutional questions.

Whitehouse said he wants Smith to declare that he recognizes the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion as the law of the land. Whitehouse then said that Mr. Bush’s nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court “pledged their fealty” to the principle of standing by judicial precedents. Once they took their seats on the high court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. violated the pledge, Whitehouse charged.

In that case, why wouldn’t Whitehouse oppose Smith no matter what the judge says as a nominee?

“There’s an argument for that,” Whitehouse replied. He said there is also an argument for waiting until a new president takes office before allowing the appeals court vacancy to be filled.

Still, Whitehouse said he is inclined to “go through the process” and see whether his concerns about Smith’s nomination can be allayed.

But how can you ever allay the concern that somebody might go back on his word?

“That’s a tough one,” Whitehouse replied. But he doesn’t want to rule out the possibility “that those fears could be allayed,” he said. Whitehouse said Smith is “entitled to fair and independent” consideration of his fitness for what has traditionally been the “Rhode Island seat” on the 1st Circuit court, which sits in Boston.

Whitehouse’s staff presented a recent abortion case as an example of how Roberts and Alito, in the senator’s view, violated their pledge to hew to judicial precedent. The decision last April in Gonzales v. Carhart upheld a federal ban on a procedure known to abortion foes as “partial birth abortion.” The 2003 legislation (which Reed opposed and Democratic Representatives Patrick J. Kennedy and James R. Langevin supported) provided no exception for the health of the mother.

Roberts and Alito were part of a 5-to-4 majority that said the restriction followed precedents because other procedures were available to women whose health was in jeopardy. The minority argued strenuously that the majority — and Congress — was mistaken on that point and that the opinion therefore broke precedent.

Whitehouse said at the time that the ruling had the “odor” of a decision that “tramples on well-established precedent.”

jmulligan@belo-dc.com