Other Columns by Horace Cooper
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A brilliant federal appellate court judge widely recognized for his legal scholarship is nominated to fill the second vacancy on the United States Supreme Court by an anti-abortion Republican president who had pledged to appoint conservative "strict constructionists" -- judges who would interpret and not legislate from the bench.

Rather than admit that they oppose him on ideological or philosophical grounds, special interest groups and liberal Democrats would instead choose the low road. Lamenting that they had allowed the president's earlier nominee for chief justice to sail through confirmation with little controversy, this time they decide to engage in a smear campaign.

First they examined his judicial record looking to see which cases they could distort and misrepresent to the American public. They argue that if he joined the Supreme Court he would roll back the clock on minority and women's rights. When that fails they would regroup and attack his ethics using an old allegation involving a conflict of interest.

Historian David McCullough reminds us that a "nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia. Although in this case the year was 1969, the brilliant judge was Clement F. Haynsworth, Jr., and the president was Richard M. Nixon, McCullough's admonition rings true. Instead of abortion, then the issue that senators and activists groups were focused on was civil rights. Led by Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana, a cadre of Senate Democrats worked hand in glove with special interest groups to organize the first "borking" of a Supreme Court nominee.

But any fair reading of Judge Haynsworth's record would show no evidence that he was an opponent of blacks and other minorities. His actual record involving civil rights litigation was fairly limited involving fewer than a dozen cases and showed no discernible predispositions one way or another. But for his critics, these facts didn't matter as they embarked on a concerted effort to misrepresent him as an unrepentant segregationist.

But that charge alone proved insufficient to torpedo his nomination. His critics would then pull another arrow out of their quiver; a decades old claim that Haynsworth had ruled in a case involving the Vend-A-Matic Company (a company that he held 3% of shares in).

Even though a thorough examination demonstrated there wasn't any ethical impropriety involved whatsoever in the case and in fact the matter had been extensively investigated and resolved well before he would ever be nominated to the Supreme Court, his opponents watched the charge gain traction by repeating it over and over.

Later, Senator Bayh's chief of staff, Bob Keefe would confess "to maintain the fantasy that they were unworthy for reasons other than their judicial philosophy, we had to develop other rationales. In the case of Haynsworth, we found that he had a rather loose view of the appearance of conflict of interest."

Tragically the techniques worked. The United States Senate would reject Clement F. Haynsworth, Jr., as associate justice of the Supreme Court by a vote of 55 to 45.

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