The New York Times reports on the various strains of "conservative" judges and has this to say about "Traditional Conservatives":
Traditionalist conservatives believe that judicial wisdom is built up slowly, and judges shouldn't depart radically in any direction from the Constitution as it has been interpreted in case law over the ages. ... On the current court, they are best represented by Justice David Souter.Somehow I don't think that invoking the name of Justice Souter is going to help Judge Wilkinson very much. Souter is "conservative" only in the sense that a rear-guard defense of the Great Society is conservative.
Traditionalists are reluctant to overturn judicial precedents except in the exceptional cases, like Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed school segregation. On Mr. Bush's shortlist, the leading traditionalist conservative is J. Harvie Wilkinson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, whom some administration officials reportedly consider too moderate.