USD Law Prof in Line for Appellate Judgeship

Bernard Siegan, a University of San Diego law professor best known for his libertarian views regarding property rights, is on the verge of being nominated by President Reagan to a seat on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, a federal judge said Thursday.

In a speech to the San Diego chapter of the Federal Bar Assn., Chief U.S. District Judge Gordon Thompson Jr. said Siegan’s nomination “will be forthcoming very soon.”

Later, in an interview, Thompson said Siegan was close to clearing the American Bar Assn.’s screening process for federal judicial nominees. A source familiar with the nomination process confirmed Thursday that the FBI already had completed a background review of Siegan.

Siegan, 61, is a friend of Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, a former USD law professor, and has traveled to Washington since Meese’s appointment as attorney general to discuss constitutional interpretation with top policy-making aides in the Justice Department.

Siegan declined comment Thursday on the possibility he will be nominated to a vacant seat on the 9th Circuit, the highest federal court in the West. In an interview with The Times last year, however, he acknowledged he was under consideration for an appellate judgeship and said he would happily accept such a job.

Stephen Markman, the assistant attorney general who coordinates judicial appointments, also declined Thursday to comment on the prospective nomination.

Siegan’s appointment would continue the rightward shift in the sprawling 9th Circuit court, which has begun under the influence of Reagan’s appointees to lose its reputation as the most liberal of the nation’s federal appeals courts.

Siegan, a former Chicago land-use lawyer who has taught at USD since 1973, has described himself as a strict constructionist on constitutional issues--one who looks to the intent of the Constitution’s framers for an understanding of constitutional questions.

Under the influence of the free-market economists of the University of Chicago, where he attended law school, he came to believe that looser interpretation of the Constitution was stripping citizens of their property rights and economic freedoms by permitting excessive zoning restrictions and regulation, Siegan said in the Times interview last year.

Economic freedoms, he argues in his writings, deserve the same strong protections as the freedoms of speech, religion and the press.

Legal scholars uniformly regard Siegan as a conservative, but vary in their opinions as to the extremeness of his views.

If named to the court, he would become the third federal appeals judge to maintain offices in San Diego. The others are Judge J. Clifford Wallace and Judge David Thompson, the brother of Gordon Thompson.

Siegan, a widower, lives in La Jolla, in the house formerly occupied by mystery writer Raymond Chandler. He is a member of the national Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution and previously was appointed by Reagan to a federal housing commission.