Norton's staunch support of property rights and ties to industry has prompted opposition from
environmentalists, who argue she is ill-suited to head the agency charged with stewardship of
500 million acres of federal land,  rescuing endangered species and managing the nation's parks.

After serving from 1991 to 1999 as Colorado's attorney general, Norton has been in private law
practice in Colorado. She is viewed widely as intelligent and personable, with a willingness to
seek out compromise, but has demonstrated an overriding belief that the less federal involvement
in people's lives the better.

Over the years she has urged a broad interpretation of the ``taking'' of property by the government,
advocating that landowners be paid for losses incurred through government regulations that limit use
of their land to protect wetlands or endangered species.

Linking environmental protection to compensation has been a flash point for environmentalists.
The Clinton administration has argued that compensation requirements would chill environmental
enforcement since government payments could become enormous.

Recognizing such a potential, Norton told a 1989 law symposium, ``I view that as something positive.''

Then a senior fellow at the conservative Pacific Research Institute, Norton said compensation
``provides fairness to the person who is harmed by ... government action'' and causes bureaucrats
to examine what effect their regulations will have on their budget.

Another approach, she argued, was to assume a ``reasonable right to use our
property. ... We might even go so far as to recognize a homesteading right to
pollute or make noise in an area.'' The remarks were later published by a
conservative Harvard law journal.

``Norton's absolutist views on property rights and her hostility to environmental protection
places her far outside the mainstream of even conservative legal scholarship,'' said Douglas Kendell,
an attorney for Community Rights Counsel, a Washington-based environmental advocacy law firm.

Nevertheless, her views have won her strong support from industry advocates,
land rights groups and most GOP conservatives. They call her approach to land
stewardship and free-market environmentalism a welcome change from what they
view as heavy-handed dictates from Washington in the Clinton years.

``She will bring a balanced approach ... to multiple use management of
federal public lands,'' said Laura Skaer, executive director of the Northwest
Mining Association, a trade group based in Spokane, Wash.

A protege of James Watt, the controversial Interior secretary in the Reagan
administration, Norton over the years has been a frequent and outspoken
supporter of more local, state and private involvement in crafting the
nation's environmental programs.

``She believes the laws of the United States apply to departments of the
federal government as well,'' said former Sen. Malcolm Wallop, a Wyoming
Republican who now heads Frontiers of Freedom, a conservative advocacy
group heavily involved in Western land issues.

With an ally on property rights at Interior, Republicans in Congress are
likely to revive the debate over compensation in connection with etlands and
endangered species legislation, environmentalists fear.

``You're going to see a convergence of the perfect storm on property
rights,'' predicts Donald Barry, an executive vice president of the Wilderness
Society and former assistant secretary for fish and wildlife in the Clinton administration.

But in Norton, don't expect another Watt, who once barred the Beach Boys from
performing at the Fourth of July festivities on the Mall. ``Watt was very much in your face,''
Barry said. ``She's going to be pleasant. She's going to be polite.''

It was Watt who in 1979 hired Norton, then a young attorney just out of the
University of Denver, at the Mountain States Legal Foundation, an advocacy
group that fought the legal battles of the ``Sagebrush'' rebellion against
Washington bureaucrats. The foundation has filed numerous lawsuits against
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt's land management policies over the past eight years.

As Colorado's attorney general, Norton also often clashed with Washington
over automobile inspections to cut air pollution and over a Colorado law that
allowed companies to escape sanctions if they voluntarily reported pollution
problems and fixed them.

``This is a battle where we are still very much in the trenches,'' she
declared in a 1996 speech. She berated Washington for threatening the state
``because we had the audacity to adopt something in the environmental area
that we in Colorado think makes sense, but the federal government doesn't agree.''

In the same speech before the Independence Institute, a Denver-based free-market
think tank, she compared the struggles between states and Washington to the Cold War.

``Just as free markets triumphed over communism,'' Norton said, ``we are in a
time ... when we can be part of the intellectual battle that shift power from
Washington back to states and local communities.''