Senators Vote Cloture on Rehnquist Debate

The Senate voted 68 to 31 this afternoon to end five days of floor debate and proceed to a final roll call on the confirmation of William H. Rehnquist as the nation’s 16th chief justice.

It took at least 60 votes to cut off the debate. Republican leaders predicted Rehnquist would be confirmed by a lopsided margin when the final roll call was made by this evening.

A final vote on confirmation of Antonin Scalia, a federal appeals court judge, to fill Rehnquist’s seat on the bench was expected to follow quickly after.

Earlier, in a dramtic move, Sen. Charles McC. Mathias Jr. (R-Md.) became the second Republican to oppose Rehnquist’s nomination, citing the jurist’s possible ethical violation in voting on a case involving Army spying on Americans.

Mathias, who is retiring this year, went on record as the debate wound down to say that he was troubled by Rehnquist’s views on segregation and women but that there was a more serious problem with his failure to remove himself from considering the Supreme Court case in 1972.

In opposing Rehnquist, Mathias said, “The accusation that Justice Rehnquist was less than candid with the Supreme Court of the United States--the institution he has been nominated to head--is a serious one, and I am not prepared to make it.

“But I am sufficiently troubled by the real possibility that he acted improperly in failing to recuse himself from the case . . . that I can no longer cast my vote in favor of his confirmation as chief justice.”

Rehnquist’s role in casting the decisive vote in the 1972 case involving the Army’s surveillance of civilians has become a major issue at his confirmation.

Although Rehnquist was involved in formulating the policy at the Nixon Justice Department, he took part in the Supreme Court decision during his first term as a justice. His critics contend that the action violated basic legal ethics.

The Supreme Court was asked Tuesday to reopen the 1972 case because of Rehnquist’s role in it.

More than 200 law professors have written the Senate arguing that Rehnquist’s failure to remove himself from the case when it was before the Supreme Court was a serious breach of legal ethics.

Mathias joined Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. (R-Conn.), who Tuesday became the first Republican to state publicly that he could not vote for Rehnquist.