Word: bench
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...areas such as protecting the rights of criminal defendants. Above all, he is the kind of man that Nixon feels the court needs in the wake of the Fortas scandal. Generally centrist in politics and cautious in law, Burger, a Republican, is neither dogmatic on the bench nor strongly oriented ideologically. He is in every way a professional jurist and a man of unquestioned probity, with the Midwestern virtues that Nixon so much admires. If, as expected, Nixon appoints a man of similar convictions to replace Abe Fortas, the court will have a nonactivist or moderate majority for the first...
Last week, having violated society's mandate, Fortas reluctantly accepted its verdict by resigning from the U.S. Supreme Court. He thus became the only man in the history of the Republic to be forced from the high bench...
Even without impeachment, the case was certainly tragic. One of the most gifted lawyers of his generation, Fortas in 43 months on the bench had already proved himself an asset to a court that has often been faulted for its unlawyerlike decisions. Though he had been prevented last year from becoming Chief Justice by congressional opposition-an obstruction that nearly everyone now views as providential-he nevertheless might have become an ever greater influence on the court and country...
Mysteries and paradoxes in the case abounded, but one of the most puzzling aspects was Fortas' concern for what, by his standards, was a relatively small sum of money. Until he went on the bench, he grossed well over $100,000 a year; some estimates go as high as $250,000. His wife, a noted tax lawyer in his old firm of Arnold and Porter, still makes more than $100,000. They lived exceedingly well, but Fortas has also in the past freely donated his expensive time and talent to causes and people he believed in. As it happens...
...reputation for wheeling and dealing in areas not uncommon for a corporate lawyer but of questionable propriety for a Supreme Court Justice. One fellow lawyer described Fortas as simply "avaricious." It is no secret that Fortas' cigar-smoking wife Carolyn was furious when L.B.J. named Fortas to the bench: he exchanged a law practice worth about $150,000 a year for a Supreme Court post that then paid only $39,500. (Mrs. Fortas, as a member of her husband's old firm, earns a reputed $100,000 a year...