Ideological Battle Over Judiciary Escalates in Senate : Reagan Assails Foes of Appeals Nominee

WASHINGTON —  President Reagan, girding for an ideological battle over his judicial nominees, Saturday trumpeted the “high caliber” of two new Supreme Court choices and denounced “partisanship” in the Senate as a threat to approval of an appeals court nominee.

Reagan went on the offensive in his weekly radio talk after Democrats and some liberal Republicans had killed one nomination, jeopardized another and vowed to look even more closely at future nominees in the face of the President’s moves last Tuesday to give the Supreme Court added conservative firepower.

The President praised Supreme Court Justice William H. Rehnquist, whom he has nominated for chief justice, as “a consistent model of fairness and an articulate spokesman for straightforward interpretations of the Constitution.”

Praises Scalia’s Talent

And he described Antonin Scalia, whom he has proposed for the vacancy created by the departure of Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, as “one of our most gifted legal minds.” Scalia serves on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

But Reagan devoted most of his five-minute broadcast to urging Senate approval this week of Daniel A. Manion, a conservative former Indiana state senator nominated by Reagan for the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.

Reagan, hailing Manion for “a sense of fairness and justice . . . above reproach,” protested that he is being subjected to “partisanship in the Senate (that) has pushed fair play by the boards.”

Despite the charge of partisanship, two members of Reagan’s own party cast key votes against Manion in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Nomination in Trouble

In a heated session May 8, the committee rejected Manion’s nomination on a 9-9 tie, with Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Charles McC. Mathias Jr. (R-Md.) voting with seven of the panel’s eight Democrats against the nomination.

The committee then voted 11 to 6 to send the nomination to the Senate floor without a recommendation, making confirmation still possible, albeit difficult.

In support of Manion, Reagan said the American Bar Assn. “has declared him fully qualified to be a federal judge” and that he has the strong endorsement of Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, president of the University of Notre Dame, where Manion was an undergraduate.

Actually, the ABA screening panel gave Manion, an attorney in South Bend, a “qualified” rating, its lowest passing grade, with an unspecified minority calling him not qualified.

Critical of Opponents

Reagan also said that opponents, in their all-out bid to block the nomination, had “even tried to make a major issue of a few typographical errors in several of his briefs and the fact that he practices law in a small town.”

Several Democrats have charged that briefs written by Manion are flawed by numerous typographical and syntactical errors.

Reagan said it was clear that “the real objection” to Manion, the son of a longtime John Birch Society leader, was that “he doesn’t conform to the liberal ideology of some senators.”

The President said one unnamed senator had told Manion at his confirmation hearing that he was “decent and honorable” but unacceptable for the judgeship “because of your political views.” Reagan commented that the Senate “should consider only a nominee’s qualifications and character, not his political views.”

Senator Replies to Reagan

Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), leader of the opposition to Manion, said in reaction to Reagan’s attack: “There is a marked decline in the quality of these (appellate court) appointments under Atty. Gen. (Edwin) Meese. . . . If the White House had shown the same attention to quality in these nominations that it has to Supreme Court candidates, there would be no showdown in the Senate on the Manion case.”

In a letter to Senate colleagues, Democrats Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Howard M. Metzenbaum of Ohio and Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont said they oppose Manion because he has an “undistinguished legal career” and “cavalierly disregarded his oath of office to uphold the Constitution.”

They cited Manion’s 1981 sponsorship of a bill in the Indiana Legislature to allow posting the Ten Commandments in public schools, although the Supreme Court two months earlier had ruled that to be unconstitutional.

No Mention of Bipartisan Vote

In his radio talk, Reagan did not mention the Judiciary Committee’s bipartisan rejection June 5 of the nomination of Jefferson B. Sessions III to be a federal District Court judge. Critics had charged that Sessions was not qualified and that several remarks he had made showed a “gross insensitivity” about racial issues.

Meese had blasted the committee’s action as “an appalling surrender to the politics of ideology.”