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The Friendship. The sinews of friendship between Abe Fortas and Lyndon Johnson are about as deep and strong as possible. In 1948, when Johnson's election to the U.S. Senate was challenged, it was Fortas who acted as his counsel and held the seat despite charges that the 87 votes by which Johnson won the primary were stolen from the opposition. When Johnson became President, one of the first men he called to his side was Fortas. The new President consulted Fortas on appointments, departmental problems, national and international policy, and the creation of the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He worked out the complex trust to manage the Johnson family's Texas holdings during Lyndon's presidency.
The depth and importance of the friendship was shown in another way last October. When Walter Jenkins, President Johnson's longtime friend and aide, was arrested on a morals charge. it was to Fortas that Jenkins first turned for help. Fortas, along with Fellow Washington Lawyer Clark Clifford, then tried to get Washington newspaper editors to hold off breaking the story of Jenkins' arrest.
It was clear that Fortas preferred to play his role outside public office. Johnson had tried to bring him into a high Government office at least once before. In September 1964, the President offered him the post of Attorney General, to replace Robert F. Kennedy. Fortas turned down the job. But the offer of a seat on the high court was one that Fortas could not turn down; he had said before, in describing his relationship with Lyndon Johnson, "He gives me the honor of having some confidence in my discretion and experience in law and government."
As a New Deal stalwart, a student and longtime friend of liberal Justice Douglas, Fortas is expected to maintain the court's current liberal, activist majority—with a special interest in civil liberties. His approach can be expected to differ only in degree from that of Arthur Goldberg, whose seat—the so-called Jewish seat—he takes on the court. But Fortas will bring with him to the bench a special problem. His long and intimate friendship with the President and his handling of some of the more difficult episodes in the Johnson catalogue will be constantly remembered. That means that both political and nonpolitical eyes will carefully scrutinize his every move on the bench.
* With Fortas' appointment, the Supreme Court will take on a decided Eli tinge. Justices Potter Stewart and Byron White also attended Yale, and Justice William O. Douglas was a member of the faculty before he joined the New Deal. No other law school can claim more than one of the court's nine Justices.