Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., demonstrated to a clutch of reporters on Tuesday that after more than two decades, he can still recount in detail the sting of being a judicial nominee on the losing side of a fight. In 1986, Sessions failed to win the approval of the Senate Judiciary Committee when President Ronald Reagan nominated the young U.S. attorney from Mobile to become a federal judge. Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, then a Republican, voted against him, as did former Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del, who was then the ranking Democrat on the panel. Sessions' detractors complained at the time that the nominee had made a series of racially insensitive remarks, calling the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union "un-American," among other things. But bygones are bygones, Sessions said this week. "We are past that."

Now 62, and in his third term in the Senate, Sessions this week won the support of his GOP colleagues to become the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee after Specter announced he was switching parties. In a plot twist fiction writers could appreciate, Sessions will now lead conservatives' scrutiny of President Obama's nominee to succeed retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Sessions agreed that his experience as a nominee will give him him empathy -- among the attributes Obama values and conservatives decry -- although he was quick to say he will object to any Supreme Court pick who would substitute bias or personal preferences for the rule of law. Edited excerpts from National Journal's Alexis Simendinger follow. Visit the archives page for more Insider Interviews.

Q: Do you believe the opposition by then-Sen. Barack Obama to nominees John Roberts and Samuel Alito to join the Supreme Court offer you and Republicans more leeway to oppose President Obama's nominee to succeed Justice Souter?

Sessions: It doesn't affect me much. But I think somebody could argue that he filibustered Alito -- somebody with fabulous qualities like Judge Alito -- and somebody could say, "How can you complain about me filibustering?"

But I'm hopeful we'll avoid the filibuster approach. I hope the president will nominate somebody who will garner broad support. He should be able to. The defining issue tends to be for me whether the judge would subordinate his personal, political, social, moral views to the law. And if a judge won't do that, then I have serious problems with that judge.

Q: In other words, not an activist judge?

Sessions: That's how I define an activist judge -- one who allows his personal views to justify twisting the law to make it say what they want it to say. And when you start doing that, you undermine the awesome respect the law has and the willingness of millions of Americans to accept rulings even if they disagree with them. If they find that the emperor has no clothes, and that this is a political decision and not a legal decision, then the whole agenda is threatened -- the whole heritage of law.

The complete Q&A is after the jump.