SUPREME COURT: Reed Steps Down

"A steadying influence," one of his old associates once called Supreme Court Justice Stanley Forman Reed. "He isn't the most brilliant member of the court, but he has good judgment." Other lawyers talked about Mr. Justice Reed's prodigious seven-day workweeks, his methodical and careful briefs, his success in keeping an even legal keel through 19 Supreme Court years. "No one could say," a former law clerk summed up, "that anybody was mad at Stanley Reed."

So quiet and unobtrusive was Justice Reed that it took his request for retirement last week, at the age of 72, to win him headlines...