Stewart resigns, giving Reagan a first high court opening
A year and a half ago, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart received a letter from a high school student in St. Cloud, Minn. The Justice had done well", wrote the young woman, but why had he stayed in the job so long? "That", recalled Stewart, 66, last week, "sort of started me thinking. His thinking led him and his wife Mary Ann to conclude that this term, his 23rd, should be his last. Last week, a month after Stewart had quietly deliverd a letter of resignation to President Reagan, he announced his decision. Not even his colleagues inside the court except Chief Justice Warren Burger, had known about it until one day before his press conference. Said he, "I'm a firm believer that it's better to go too soon than to stay too long."
The news was doubly a surprise because other Justices had been considered for more likely to depart. Five occupants of the bench are over 70 and two, William Brennan, 75, and Thurgood Marshall, 72, are reportedly in less than robust health. President Reagan now has an unexpectedly early opportunity to begin his oft-promised ideological remolding of the court. His main criterion for candidates is clearly known, said White House Spokesman Larry Speaks, " He will not seek only candidates who necessarily agree with him on every position, but rather those who share one key view, the role of the courts is to interpret the law, not to enact new law by judicial fiat."
Some observers think Reagan may pick a crony, White House Counsellor Edwin Meese, Deputy Secretary of State William Clark. Others predict that he will select an academic like Yale's Robert Bork or Chicago's Philip Kurland. The nation's lower courts offer Reagan such conservatives as Dallin Oaks of the Utah Supreme Court and Malcolm Wilkey, an old friend of Chief Justice Warren Burger's who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals.
More intriguing is the possibility that the 102nd Justice will be the first woman appointee. Last October Reagan pledged that he would fill "one of the first vacancies" with a woman. Among the names under speculation: former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Carla Hills. White House Aide Elizabeth Dole (wife of Senator Robert Dole) and U.S. Appeals Court Judge Cornelia Kennedy, who is known for her hard line in criminal cases. Insiders expect the nominee to be named soon, whatever the sex, to give the Senate plenty of time to begin the confirmation process before its scheduled August recess.
Stewart's retirement will round off a legal career that began virtually in infancy. As a child, Stewart would listen while his father, a Cincinnati lawyer and one-time mayor who would later serve on the Ohio Supreme Court, simultaneously shaved and rehearsed his courtroom arguments. Schooled at Hotchkiss, Yale and Yale Law School, he served as a deck officer on Navy oilers during World War II, "bored to death 99% of the time, and scared to death 1%." After three years of Wall Street he retired to Cincinnati. In 1954 Stewart was named to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, becoming at 39 the youngest federal appellate judge in the country. Four years later, President Eisenhower nominated him for the Supreme Court.