Squeeze Play

Resistance to the appointment, President Reagan assured a political rally in Miami last week, had come from a "little lynch mob." Some "little lynch mob": half the U.S. Senate, backed by a phalanx of other politicians and legal scholars, all opposing the President's nomination of Archconservative Daniel Manion to a federal judgeship. The final vote of the Senators was 49 to 49. The roll call came on the question of whether to reconsider an earlier vote, one that would have been 47 to 47 but tipped 48 to 46 for confirmation only because the rules forced Senate Democratic Leader Robert Byrd to vote yes if, as a tactic, he had wanted to move to reconsider. The tie was enough to give the Administration a victory. Nonetheless, Vice President George Bush cast a tie-breaking 50th vote, scoring a point with the right-wing forces that had made a cause celebre of the fight against Manion's appointment to the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Chicago.

In the showdown that ended weeks of tense maneuvering and blatant logrolling by pro-Manion forces, Senators divided mainly along party lines, with only two Democrats for Manion and five Republicans against. The deans of some 40 law schools protested the appointment on the ground that Manion was short on experience and competence. A South Bend, Ind., lawyer who is a former state legislator and son of a leader of the ultraconservative John Birch Society, Manion, 44, has never argued a case before a federal appeals court. The American Bar Association had found Manion "qualified," but that is its lowest passing grade.

In the end, the fight became a test of presidential prerogative in judicial appointments opposed by a protest against what Administration critics see as a conspicuous decline in the quality of judicial nominees.

Coincidentally, the importance of screening candidates for lifetime judicial appointments was underscored last week by the case of Harry Claiborne, chief judge of Nevada's U.S. district court. Last week Claiborne, a 1978 Jimmy Carter appointee, became the first federal judge to be impeached by the House of Representatives in a half-century and only the eleventh in history. The vote in the House was unanimous: 406 to 0. Convicted of tax evasion in 1984 and sentenced to two years in prison, Claiborne, 69, has refused to resign from the bench because he contends that he was a victim of government harassment. He intends to fight his ouster when the Senate hears the case in September. In the meantime, he continues to draw his $78,700-a- year salary.