Members of the president’s Republican Party and southern Democrats who previously supported segregation pressed senators to support G. Harold Carswell. Instead, many senators voted their conscience. On April 8, 1970, the Senate voted 45–51 to reject the nominee. A cartoonist compared their vote to historic actions of previous legislators lauded by John F. Kennedy in his book Profiles in Courage.
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
1970 Chapter, drawing by Herbert Block, April 9, 1970
Congress Rejects President Richard Nixon’s Nominees
President Richard Nixon had the opportunity to fill two Supreme Court seats in 1969 when Chief Justice Earl Warren retired and Associate Justice Abe Fortas resigned. The Senate approved Nixon’s choice of Warren Burger as chief justice, but filling Fortas’s vacated seat proved controversial. Wanting a more conservative court, Nixon sought a strict constructionist. The Senate rejected two nominees—Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell—before finally confirming Harry Blackmun in 1970.
“As we recall, this was perhaps the hardest fought nomination in over a generation, and it was made doubly difficult because the matter that concerned us centered on the very sensitive issue of judicial ethics.”
Senator Birch E. Bayh of Indiana, on the Nomination of G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court, March 16, 1970
Members of the president’s Republican Party and southern Democrats who previously supported segregation pressed senators to support G. Harold Carswell. Instead, many senators voted their conscience. On April 8, 1970, the Senate voted 45–51 to reject the nominee. A cartoonist compared their vote to historic actions of previous legislators lauded by John F. Kennedy in his book Profiles in Courage.
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
