Judge Nominee Didn’t Assail Integration Ruling

Contrary to a published report, University of San Diego law professor Bernard Siegan--nominated by President Reagan to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals--never intended to criticize a landmark civil rights decision in an article assessing the Supreme Court, correspondence with his editors indicates.

But spokesmen for liberal and civil rights groups--which had called for close scrutiny of Siegan’s nomination because of a report that he had castigated the court’s 1954 decision in Brown vs. Board of Education--said Wednesday that other questions remain and promised to continue to insist on a careful Senate review.

Erroneous Report

A Washington-area legal publication reported earlier this month that editors at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, had excised criticism of the landmark school desegregation case from early drafts of a chapter written by Siegan for a book published by Cato in 1985.

However, Edward H. Crane, president of the institute, said Wednesday that Cato’s vice president, David Boaz, had erred in telling the legal newspaper that Siegan’s draft of the chapter criticized the decision, which held that racially segregated schooling was unconstitutional.

Letters exchanged between Siegan and Boaz before the book’s publication, copies of which Crane gave to The Times, indicate that Siegan’s editors understood that he was not commenting on the Brown decision in his essay.

“From the context I infer that you are not criticizing Brown vs. Board of Education and other desegregation cases, but only busing, quotas and other measures to enforce integration,” Boaz wrote to Siegan in October, 1984.

As published, the chapter made clear that Siegan--a “strict constructionist” who favors a narrow view of the scope of proper judicial action--opposed court decisions requiring local government to take steps to integrate public schools.

Such decisions represent “the most flagrant example” of how the Supreme Court has “usurped powers belonging to other governmental bodies,” Siegan wrote.

Intense Evaluation

Despite the effort to clarify Siegan’s stand on the Brown case, potential opponents of his nomination said they will continue to seek an intense evaluation of his fitness to sit on the 9th Circuit, whose jurisdiction stretches across nine Western states, including California.

” . . . What we’ve learned thus far . . . raises serious concerns, and this will be a nomination that bears close scrutiny,” Ralph Neas, director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said.

Steven Metalitz, an aide to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who heads a task force of Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that will evaluate judicial nominees, said he believes that Siegan “will get careful scrutiny, because my understanding is he’s taken some controversial positions.”