His choices are white, male, conservative and solidly competent
Ronald Reagan has rarely written himself a better script. Faced with filling a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, he named the high bench's first woman Justice: the capable, personable and conservative Sandra Day O'Connor. The President's backers were mostly delighted, and his critics were momentarily disarmed. At the midpoint of his term, the choice of O'Connor continues to control the public impression of Reagan's judicial nominations. With little public fanfare, he has appointed 88 other judges to life tenure on district and circuit courts—the federal trial and appeals bench. They, and other nominations to come, assure Reagan a potent legal legacy that some judiciary watchers find thrilling, others chilling. As a group, his choices very much wear the Reagan brand: they are mostly white, male and conservatively Republican. At the same time, as even some liberals admit, they are solidly competent.
During the 1980 campaign, Candidate Reagan inveighed against left-leaning activist judges and promised a dramatic change; his Republican platform called for the appointment of judges who would restore respect for "traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life." The ideological thrust so distressed a group of 61 practicing lawyers and law professors that they signed an advertisement urging Reagan's defeat be cause he was a threat to an "independent judiciary." Last week TIME completed a straw poll of the signers to see if they still believe as they did in 1980. Of those who were willing to record their opinion, the vast majority said they would sign the ad again, and most thought the Reagan choices were too "rigidly conservative." But only one-third thought that his judges were "significantly lower" in quality than those of President Carter.
In fact the ratings given Reagan's appointees by the tradition-minded American Bar Association are nearly the same as those given to Carter's. About 6% in each group got the highest ranking, "exceptionally well qualified"; while Carter named three judges who were found "not qualified," none of Reagan's has suffered that stigma. Says one Democratic aide on the Senate Judiciary Committee: "There have been some ultraconservative judges, but there has been an absence of real clinkers." (For brief profiles of three Reagan judges, see below.)
There has also been another glaring absence: new black faces. Reagan's sole black appointment is Appeals Court Judge Lawrence Pierce of New York, who was elevated from federal district court. Only two Hispanics have been appointed, and they serve in Puerto Rico. Four, including O'Connor, are women. (There are three more women and two Hispanics among 21 nominees now awaiting Senate confirmation.)