Nation: Once More, with Feeling

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Ambitious. At the time he was running for office, Carswell was two months out of Mercer University Law School, editing the paper and running a local telephone company that he had helped to finance. Ambitious, having fought in the Pacific as a Navy lieutenant during World War II, Carswell might have figured that it was time to leave rural Irwinton, and politics was a way to do it. When his political bid failed, Harrold and his wife Virginia moved to her home town of Tallahassee. Carswell, a Democrat, was persuaded by a local newsman to take Eisenhower's side in a radio debate with an Adlai Stevenson backer. Soon he became known as Ike's advocate in Florida, and when the Republicans took office, Carswell was named a U.S. Attorney. He became a Republican, and in 1958 Eisenhower appointed him a federal district judge. Last spring, when Nixon and Attorney General Mitchell were shopping for a Chief Justice to replace Earl Warren, Carswell figured prominently among the contenders. After Warren Burger was named, Carswell was elevated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth District. Now, after serving in that post for only six months, he will very likely become the ninth and youngest member of the Supreme Court.

Crisp Style. In assessing his colleague. Chief Judge John R. Brown of the Fifth Circuit says that Carswell has "the ideal combination of physical vigor and dynamic personality." He is not, says Brown, "a neutral spirit." In contrast to his pleasant, gregarious manner off the bench, Carswell's decision-writing style is crisp and cautious. New York University Associate Law Professor Leroy Clark, a black former Legal Defense Fund lawyer in Florida, calls Carswell "very bright." But, adds Clark, "he was probably the most hostile judge I've ever appeared before. He was insulting to black lawyers; he rarely would let me finish a sentence." As proof of Carswell's conservative civil rights record, Clark refers to a Yale University Ph.D. thesis by Mrs. Mary Hannah Curzan, a former political science student and wife of a Washington lawyer. Between 1953 and 1967, according to Mrs. Curzan's thesis, Carswell ranked eighth among 31 Southern district judges in rulings against blacks. Most observers agree that Carswell is less an interpreter of the law than Haynsworth in every area, including civil rights. While he was a district judge, 60% of his 23 civil rights decisions were reversed by the Fifth Circuit Court. In 1963, he dismissed a complaint on behalf of blacks who were trying to attend a Tallahassee theater; the Circuit Court reversed his ruling with the biting comment, "These orders are clearly in error."