Half & Half

In 1953, when the Republican Eisenhower Administration took over after 20 years of Democratic rule, Democrats held 80% of all federal judgeships. That figure has since been whittled down to about 50%, and the Democratic Senate, fearing more attrition, has pigeonholed many Eisenhower judicial nominations (25 lay unconfirmed last week), and has refused for three years to act on an urgent Administration bill to create 45 new judges' jobs in areas where docket backlogs delay decisions by as much as 3 1/2 years.

Determined to break the log jam, Attorney General William P. Rogers told reporters at the American Bar Association convention in Miami last week that President Eisenhower has approved a bargaining proposal. If, said Rogers, the Congress would approve the judicial-expansion bill, then the Administration would promise to fill half the posts with Democrats, the other half with Republicans. But Rogers' fifty-fifty idea fell with a soft plop in the Senate, where Republicans are unwilling to strike such a patronage-defeating bargain--and where Democrats seem more than willing to wait a year or so, when they hope that under their own Administration they can start rebuilding toward that nice 80% Democratic judiciary.

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