THE SUPREME COURT: CHANGE AT THE TOP : Opposition Tempered by Sense of Little Change : Senate Republicans Praise Choices

Although the Senate has been unusually hostile to some of President Reagan’s most recent judicial choices, its Republican leaders Tuesday hailed Reagan’s Supreme Court nominations and predicted speedy confirmation of both William H. Rehnquist as chief justice and Antonin Scalia as associate justice.

“Without question the President has selected two outstanding individuals who have . . . the right stuff, and I would guess they would be confirmed by (the Republican-controlled Senate) without any great deal of delay,” Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), equally enthusiastic, pledged to begin hearings as soon as he receives official notice of the nominations.

Some Withhold Judgment

Leading Democrats, meanwhile, said that they would withhold judgment until they had time to further examine the judicial records of the two, and some expressed concern about the conservative leanings of Rehnquist and Scalia.

California Sen. Alan Cranston, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat and an opponent to Rehnquist’s original nomination to the Supreme Court in 1971, said: “I have grave doubts whether someone with the extreme right-wing views of Justice Rehnquist can properly manage the court as chief justice.”

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), the Judiciary Committee’s ranking Democrat, suggested, however, that such uneasiness alone may not be adequate grounds for blocking their nominations.

“I think many of President Reagan’s policies are not good for the country, but he won the election and he has the right to make the choice,” Biden said.

He added, moreover, that Rehnquist and Scalia are “in a different league intellectually” from some of the Administration’s other recent judicial nominations, who have been criticized as unfit for the federal bench.

Reagan’s judicial nominations have been a source of increasing friction between the White House and the Senate, which is given power by the Constitution to block the appointments.

A few weeks ago, for example, the Judiciary Committee rejected the Administration’s nomination of Jefferson B. Sessions III, a U.S. attorney in Alabama, to be a federal district judge. The rejection, based on criticism that Sessions had been insensitive on racial issues, marked only the second time in almost five decades that the committee had blocked a judicial nomination from reaching the Senate floor.

It had followed a committee vote in May to send the nomination of Daniel Manion, a 44-year-old Indiana lawyer, to the full Senate without a recommendation. Critics had said that Manion was unqualified for nomination to a federal appeals court. A vigorous fight is expected in upcoming Senate debate on Manion’s nomination.

Opposition to the Supreme Court nominations may be tempered by a perception on Capitol Hill that the appointments of Rehnquist and Scalia, coupled with the retirement of Chief Justice Warren Burger, would have relatively little effect on the outcome of most cases before the court.

“I don’t think that much will change, but you’ll have even a more conservative hard-liner in the chair,” said California Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), a liberal who chairs the House Judiciary civil and constitutional rights subcommittee.

Edwards added: “I’m just glad it’s not (Atty. Gen. Edwin) Meese,” whom some believed was a top contender for a Supreme Court nomination.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who is Edwards’ Senate counterpart, said that the court is likely to chart a more conservative course in cases where it is closely divided. “About one-fifth of all cases decided in the court in the decade of 1974-1984 were decided by a one-vote margin,” and in many of those Burger sided with the more liberal position, the conservative Hatch said.

More revolutionary swings will occur only if additional vacancies open on the court while Reagan is President, Hatch said. “If this Administration can put another person on the Supreme Court in addition, there really will be some very serious changes,” Hatch said.

Members of the California Supreme Court agreed that the nominations, if confirmed by the Senate, would have relatively little impact on the U.S. Supreme Court’s overall direction.

“I don’t think it will have a great deal of impact on California law,” California Supreme Court Justice Edward A. Panelli said. “I don’t see that the changes (in philosophy) are going to be all that significant. In Scalia, we are picking up somebody who is in much the same school as Chief Justice Burger.”

Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird said she regretted that a woman had not been chosen to lead the panel.

“My only disappointment is that a well-qualified female jurist such as (Supreme Court Justice) Sandra Day O’Connor was not appointed,” she said, “because it now appears that a woman will not appear as chief justice of the United States before the end of this century.”

Staff writer Dan Morain contributed to this story from San Francisco.