Spoils Spat

Last year President Eisenhower, worried about the growing backlog of cases in U.S. courts, urged the creation of 40 new judgeships, even offered to split them evenly between Republicans and Democrats. But the Democratic Congress, gambling that there would be a Democrat in the White House this year, ignored Ike's request, waited until last May to provide for the new judgeships, then baked itself the tastiest patronage pie in a long while by creating 73. Last week, in what was certain to become one of the running political fights of the year, the victors were quarreling over the spoils.

The bickering began when word got around that Bobby Kennedy might be planning a 5-1 ratio, with 58 of the new posts going to Democrats and 15 to Republicans. That was not at all what a lot of Democrats had in mind, and Michigan's Senator Pat McNamara voiced his feelings in no uncertain terms: "I will oppose any Republican from Michigan regardless of who he is. That's final."

Then one of the first appointments was announced, and, not by chance, it went to a good friend of Mississippi's Senator James Eastland, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which passes on all new judges. William Harold Cox, who roomed with Eastland at the University of Mississippi law school nearly 40 years ago, has a solid legal background in Jackson, has occasionally served as a circuit judge and has not publicly committed himself on touchy civil rights issues. Yet, just as if a button had been pushed, the N.A.A.C.P. began protesting.

Then, with Eastland taken care of, it remained for the Administration to satisfy House Judiciary Committee Chairman Emanuel Celler--and Celler might well take a good deal of satisfying. As of last week, he was not the least bit happy. Two of Celler's fellow New Yorkers, Republican Senators Kenneth Keating and Jacob Javits, had submitted to the Justice Department a list of bar association recommendations for New York's eleven new judgeships. "The brashest thing I ever heard of," protested Celler.

Off to that sort of a start in splitting its judicial patronage pie, it seemed certain that the Administration is going to have a livelier time than it likes.

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