Senator Hatch's opportunity.

DESPITE early media comment to the contrary, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is no more "moderate" than Robert Bork, no more a "mediator" than Clarence Thomas, and no more of a "distinguished scholar" than Douglas Ginsburg. None of whom, of course, was met with quite the same acclaim as Mrs. Ginsburg upon being nominated to the Supreme Court.

Judge Ginsburg is an honorable and intelligent woman who, by all contemporary standards, is well equipped for the bench. Unlike some others on the White House short-list, she has shown herself sensitive to the distinctions between the advocate and the jurist. But she is "moderate" only in comparison with the activist feminist lawyer on the lines of Catharine MacKinnon or Hillary Clinton.

Ruth Ginsburg is a life long patron of the American Civil Liberties Union and feminist legal causes. With an occasional deviation, she supports expanded federal. civil-rights laws, affirmative action, broad federal regulations, constitutional "rights of privacy," and governmental centralization. Her record on criminal-justice issues is mixed. Only because it is so much easier for liberals than for conservatives to recast their reputations through the most modest concessions has Judge Ginsburghs purely tactical questioning of Roe v. Wade transformed her in the media's mind to Mrs. Learned Hand.

It is unlikely that Judge Ginsburg by herself will end the stalemate on the Supreme Court. But with the addition of one or two colleagues, she would certainly contribute to a liberal restoration. President Clinton inadvertently predicted what that would mean when he remarked that a Supreme Court Justice should be capable of "translating the hopes of the American people . . . into an enduring body of constitutional law." While admittedly a more mundane responsibility, the role of judges is to say what the law means, not to divine our innermost hopes.

Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee should devote considerable attention to this nomination, not with the expectation of defeating it, but with the purpose of laying a foundation for the debate over the next three hundred or so judicial nominations to be made by this President. To inform the public about how Mr. Clinton proposes to reshape one of the coequal branches of government is not only useful civics; it is also good politics. Whatever his personal regard for Judge Ginsburg, Senator Hatch should use the hearings as an opportunity to address the great constitutional issue of our time (of any time): the boundaries of self-government. Mrs. Ginsburg is not, after all, receiving a feminist prize; she is assuming the role that Shelley reserved for poets: that of unacknowledged legislator of the world.