Clement Haynsworth

(b. Greenville, S.C., 30 Oct. 1912; d. Greenville, 22 November 1989), federal appellate judge and rejected nominee for the Supreme Court. Following some twenty years of private law practice in South Carolina, Haynsworth was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1957. He became chief judge in 1964. On 18 August 1969, President Richard Nixon nominated Haynsworth for the vacancy created when Abe Fortas resigned from the Supreme Court. After eight days of hearings and a 10‐to‐7 vote in favor of Haynsworth in the Senate Judiciary Committee, the full Senate rejected the nomination by a vote of 55 to 45 on 21 November 1969. Haynsworth returned to the court of appeals and continued to serve there as a senior judge after 1981 until his death in 1989.

In the confirmation debate, Haynsworth was charged with voting in two cases involving subsidiaries of companies in which he owned stock and with buying a company's stock between the decision and announcement of the decision in a case involving that company. Senators who had emphasized Fortas's ethical improprieties felt obligated to take these charges seriously. For many senators, however, the ethics charges masked opposition on ideological grounds. The NAACP and AFL‐CIO opposed Haynsworth as insufficiently supportive of civil rights and labor litigants. Furthermore, the nomination debate occurred in the context of liberal‐conservative tension over Representative Gerald Ford's proposal to impeach Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and the Nixon administration's efforts to slow southern school desegregation.

See also Nominations, Controversial; Nominees, Rejection of.

— Susan M. Olson

Clement Furman Haynesworth, Jr., was a controversial judge on a federal appellate court who was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court but failed to win confirmation.

Born October 30, 1912, in Greenville, South Carolina, and raised in South Carolina, Haynesworth graduated from Furman University in 1933 and from Harvard Law School in 1936. He then returned to his home state and practiced law there for nearly twenty years. In 1957 President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Haynesworth to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Haynesworth became chief judge of the court in 1964.

In May 1969 Associate Justice Abe Fortas, whose earlier nomination to become chief justice was withdrawn amid charges of financial impropriety and conflict of interest, resigned his seat on the U.S. Supreme Court after new charges of unethical conduct were raised. Later that summer President Richard M. Nixon nominated Haynesworth to succeed Fortas.

Reaction to Haynesworth's nomination was mixed. Some commentators thought him to be a competent nominee, if not particularly distinguished, whereas others expressed disappointment at his conservative judicial views. But no Supreme Court nominee had been denied confirmation since 1930 and it initially appeared that Haynesworth would be confirmed with little debate.

However, in the confirmation hearings that followed Haynesworth faced serious conflict-of-interest allegations. It was disclosed that he had participated in two cases involving subsidiaries of companies in which he held stock. Senators opposing his nomination also revealed that Haynesworth had purchased stock in a corporation after he voted in its favor in a decision but before the decision was announced by the court. In addition, labor and civil rights groups voiced opposition to Haynesworth's nomination, contending that he did not support their causes. Nevertheless, the Senate Judiciary Committee narrowly approved Haynesworth's appointment in a 10-7 vote.

In November 1969, the full Senate, mindful of the controversy that had surrounded Fortas's ethical improprieties, rejected Haynesworth's nomination by a vote of 55-45. This was the widest margin of defeat ever for a Supreme Court nominee.

Haynesworth's failure to win confirmation was widely viewed as a major political setback for President Nixon. A second Nixon nominee for the Fortas seat, Judge G. Harrold Carswell, another southern conservative, was widely viewed as unqualified for the Court and was also defeated. The vacancy was finally filled, in May 1970, by Judge Harry A. Blackmun, of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, who was confirmed unanimously.

Following his defeat, Haynesworth returned to the court of appeals. He became a senior judge in 1981, and he remained with the court until his death November 22, 1989, at the age of seventy-seven.

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