Considering the Alternatives

Who besides G. Harrold Carswell could Nixon have selected for the Supreme Court? This week's LIFE magazine presents nine "people the President could feel comfortable in picking if he widened his field beyond narrowly geographic or partisan considerations." Proposed by judges, scholars and bar officials, they have varying political attitudes. Most, however, are disposed to a less activist role for the court than was typical of the Warren years, and unlike Carswell, they would not be open to charges of racism and incompetence. Among the list's conspicuous omissions are Solicitor General Erwin Griswold (probably because of his age--65), Secretary of State William Rogers, who was Attorney General during part of the Eisenhower Administration, and North Carolina's Senator Sam Ervin, who is respected by his fellow Senators as a constitutional expert but is a Democrat.

The list includes three other Democrats Nixon would be unlikely to appoint whatever their qualifications: Harvard Law Professor Paul Freund, a leading constitutional scholar and perennial court possibility; Columbia Law Professor Herbert Wechsler, a chief drafter of the Model Penal Code and director of the American Law Institute; and Shirley Hufstedler, a California-based judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals who is currently the highes-ranking woman jurist on the federal bench. The Republicans:

> Bernard Segal, 62, the loquacious, energetic American Bar Association president. A wealthy Philadelphia lawyer and an opponent of some forms of civil disobedience, Segal in the mid-1960s was co-chairman of a committee that dispatched civil rights lawyers to Mississippi.

> William Coleman, 47, whom Justice Felix Frankfurter picked as the first Negro law clerk in the history of the Supreme Court. Now senior partner in a Philadelphia law firm, Coleman is on the U.S. delegation to the United Nations and a strong force in the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund.

> Charles Breitel, 61, associate judge of the New York State Court of Appeals. A close associate of 1948 Republican Presidential Candidate Thomas Dewey, Breitel, LIFE says, is "an outstanding expert on criminal procedure, generally a strict conservative on the limits of court intervention, and like Chief Justice Warren Burger, a longtime prominent advocate of penal reform."

> Edward Gignoux, 53, U.S. district judge for the state of Maine. Known far beyond Maine because he fills in on other district courts when his own case load lightens, Gignoux is outstanding for his calm judicial temperament and widely respected opinions.

> Charles Alan Wright, 42, law professor at the University of Texas and author of a definitive work on federal courts. Despite his youth, Wright is a member of the Council of the American Law Institute and the U.S. Judicial Conference's standing committee on rules of practice and procedure. He was a vigorous supporter of Haynsworth.

> Frank M. Johnson, 51, U.S district judge for southeastern Alabama. One of the first Southern judges to enforce the Supreme Court's 1954 school-desegregation decision, Johnson (TIME cover, May 12, 1967) is a scrupulously fair legal craftsman who has helped strengthen the forces of Southern moderation. No liberal save by right-wing Southern standards, he has followed the Supreme Court despite intense local pressure, sat on courts that abolished the Alabama poll tax and handed down the nation's first order requiring a state to reapportion voting districts. He is probably the finest Southern Republican trial judge of his generation.

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