Next Step After Bork? Administration Not Sure How to Proceed

While the Senate remains deadlocked over scheduling a vote on Supreme Court nominee Judge Robert H. Bork, Reagan Administration officials remain uncertain about how to choose a new nominee after Bork’s expected defeat, sources said Friday.

In recent years, choosing candidates for high court vacancies has been a relatively simple process for the Administration. Both Bork and Justice Antonin Scalia, who was appointed last year, were “consensus candidates” with broad support in the White House, at the Justice Department and among conservative interest groups.

But with Bork facing elimination, “there is no consensus” for the seat vacated by Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., one Administration official said. Instead, influential factions and groups are pressing a full range of potential candidates and different strategies.

The result, said several key officials, is that the post may remain unfilled for most of the court’s current term.

Justice Department

In the Justice Department, sources said, there is strong support for appointment of another hard-line conservative judge similar to Bork. President Reagan appeared to favor that option when he declared after a speech in New Jersey earlier this week that he would seek a nominee that Bork’s opponents would “object to just as much.”

However, many White House officials are calling on Reagan to appoint a second woman to the high court--a move that could split the coalition that opposed Bork. Officials said there are a number of potential candidates in those, and other, categories.

At the same time, the continued fight over scheduling the Senate vote on Bork has increasingly frayed tempers, which could slow the confirmation process for any nominee Reagan may name.

Senate leaders Friday abandoned plans to begin debating the nomination Monday after conservatives, led by Sen. Gordon J. Humphrey (R-N.H.), refused to agree on a time limit for the debate. The conservatives repeated their demands to be allowed ample time to vent their anger against the opposition campaign that helped align an apparent majority of senators against the nominee.

“I’ve been here long enough . . . to smell the direction this is going,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. said in a Senate speech Thursday evening. The debate over the high court “is rapidly, rapidly devolving into an exchange” that will “leave scars,” he said.

Administration officials would like to see the high court vacancy filled before Congress’ adjournment. That is now set for Nov. 21, although many expect that the date will have to moved back. If that deadline is missed, a new nominee could not be confirmed until, at the earliest, mid-January, when the Senate comes back into session. By then, the high court’s term would be more than half over.

In the field of prospective nominees, sources said, Justice Department officials have been considering a number of conservative federal judges, with appeals court Judge Pasco M. Bowman II of Kansas City, Mo., high on the list.

White House officials close to Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr., by contrast, have been pushing for a conservative nominee who would afford an additional political benefit, Administration officials said.

The women judges reportedly under consideration include federal appeals court Judge Cynthia H. Hall of Los Angeles, who has close ties to California Republicans and is a friend of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Hall, 58, was named by Reagan in 1981 to the federal district court in Los Angeles and then to the appeals court in 1984.

Other judges with potential extra benefit, sources said, include Judge J. Clifford Wallace of the appeals court in San Diego, who would be the court’s first Mormon member, and Judge Laurence Silberman of the appeals court in Washington, who could re-establish what has been termed the “Jewish seat” on the high court that has been vacant since Abe Fortas resigned in 1969.