University of Virginia Library

Tricky Dick's Coalition

Tricky Dick Nixon's latest move to solidify
his conservative coalition, the nomination of
Clement F. Haynsworth to the Supreme
Court, is running into trouble in the Senate.
That the President's appointment probably
will not be politely accepted by the upper
house is perhaps a fitting and ironic
retribution to the Southern conservatives and
strict constructionists whose interests Mr.
Haynsworth figures to serve if he ever attains
the bench.

The self-righteous cries in support of
judicial ethics that emanated from those
gentlemen when Abe Fortas was nominated
for Chief Justice last fall may well return to
haunt them in this Republican autumn.
Questions have been raised about Mr.
Haynsworth's ethical standards in light of a
1963 decision in support of a textile lockout
in South Carolina. After the decision, a
vending machine company of which Mr.
Haynsworth was part owner mysteriously
managed to double its business within the
textile plant.

Although the Justice Department has
concluded that Mr. Haynsworth's actions were
in accord with the letter of judicial ethics,
they will nonetheless provide a moral standard
under which labor and civil rights interests can
campaign to block his appointment, just as
the conservatives used Mr. Fortas' peccadilloes
to legitimize their antagonism to his liberal
and activist judicial philosophy.

President Nixon will probably be able to
push the nomination through anyway. During
the campaign he promised to remold the
Court in his own image, filling it with
moderates who didn't believe in the active
role that the Warren Court chose to follow.
The nomination is also important to the
President's desire to build a Republican
coalition based partially on conservative
support throughout the South. (The priority
that the President's party is giving to that goal
is why Linwood Holton's campaign is going to
receive as much national help as is now
planned.) It would be a good beginning to the
Democratic Party's attempt to thwart that
coalition and the type of government it stands
for if Mr. Haynsworth's nomination were
rejected by the Senate.