 Thursday, January 19, 2006
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How to Lose a Supreme Court Confirmation
Bernard Hibbitts at 2:15 PM
One of the great things about editing JURIST is that you hear from all kinds of interesting people. In November 2004 I heard from a reader about a JURIST This Day at Law entry on failed US Supreme Court pick Harrold Carswell, nominated by President Nixon on January 19, 1970. The nomination of the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judge, never hugely popular in the first place, went down in flames in a 51-45 Senate floor vote after a reporter discovered the text of a 1948 political campaign speech by Carswell in which he said "segregation of the races is proper."
Thirty-four years later Edward Roeder wrote to JURIST:You are factually correct. The speech is accurately quoted. But the most significant part of it wasn't that quote -- which, after all, reflected the law of the land through Brown v. Board of Education.
The most significant part was Carswell's avowal of his "firm, vigorous belief in the principles of white supremacy." I recall this because I was the reporter who discovered the speech, in the basement of the Wilkinson County courthouse in Georgia, where it was preserved as lead story in The Irwinton Bulletin, a weekly Carswell edited, which was kept because it was the legal paper of record. Roeder later added:I found and reviewed my photo of Carswell's 1948 speech. First, it may be helpful to provide a bit of context for the part you quoted. The graf read, "I Am A Southerner By Ancestry, Birth, Training, Inclination, Belief And Practice. I Believe That Segregation Of The Races is Proper And The ONLY Practical And Correct Way Of Life In Our States."
The first letter of each word is capitalized, the the word ONLY is in all caps.
The "white supremacy" quote, two grafs later, is as strident: "I Yield To NO MAN, As A Fellow Candidate, Or As A Fellow Citizen, In The Firm Vigirous Belief In The Principles Of White Supremacy, And I Shall Always Be So Governed." Again, the first letter of each word is capitalized, and NO MAN is in all caps. "Vigorous" is misspelled in the newspaper. But segregation wasn't the only thing at issue in the failed Carswell nomination. Roeder recalled:Another great quote spawned by that confirmation battle was by Sen. Judiciary Committee Ranking Republican Roman Hruska, in response to the charge that Carswell was "mediocre." Hruska famously told the cameras staked outside the hearing room:
"Even if he was mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers . . . They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance? We can't have all Brandeises and Cardozos and Frankfurters and stuff like that there." Perhaps Harriet Miers, back in the White House after her own brief flirtation with judicial fame, would agree.
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