Brennan, Top Liberal, Quits Supreme Court : Judiciary: Ill health forces retirement. Political battle looms. His replacement could have profound impact.

Justice William J. Brennan Jr., the 84-year old liberal leader of the U.S. Supreme Court and one of the most influential jurists of the 20th Century, announced Friday that he is resigning because of declining health.

Brennan, who has served for 34 years on the high court, said he suffered a “small stroke” in recent weeks and his “advancing age and medical condition” made it impossible for him keep up with the “strenuous demands” of the job.

Brennan was not merely a crucial liberal vote but the guiding legal thinker for the liberal wing of an increasingly conservative court. As a result, his resignation could lead to profound changes in the court in the years ahead and have a critical impact on some of the nation’s most divisive controversies--particularly abortion.

For President Bush, the resignation creates an opportunity to move the court further to the right by nominating a conservative replacement. But trying to do so could touch off a political fight with the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The choice of Brennan’s successor could become a national battle over abortion. Four conservative justices have already said they believe the landmark 1973 court ruling affirming a constitutional right to abortion, Roe vs. Wade, should be overturned. Bush could create a majority of five if he succeeds in replacing Brennan with an abortion foe.

Brennan’s impact on American law was profound.

Though little known by the general public, Brennan from the days of the Little Rock school desegregation battle to the recent decision upholding flag burning as free speech, has been the architect of rulings supporting civil rights, the First Amendment and abortion rights.

Particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, Brennan served as the voice of liberalism, the defender of minorities, women and the poor, on a court that was moving steadily to the right.

“It is my hope that the court during my years of service has built a legacy of interpreting the Constitution and federal laws to make them responsible to the needs of the people whom they were intended to benefit and protect,” Brennan said in a statement released late Friday. “This legacy can and will withstand the test of time.”

During the last year, the short, frail justice had been plagued by a series of nagging ailments and appeared wobbly at times. In the last two weeks, he fell at Newark International Airport and struck his head, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said.

After consulting doctors, he decided that he had to step down. His resignation, tendered to President Bush in a letter Friday, is effective immediately.

Speculation about possible successors focused on Kenneth Starr, a conservative former judge on the U.S. court of appeals in Washington who is now solicitor general, the Justice Department’s No. 3 position and the government’s chief advocate before the high court.

But presidents often use Supreme Court nominations to please important constituencies, and Bush, who has been trying to broaden his Administration’s appeal among blacks and Latinos, might seek to appoint a member of a minority group or a woman, several sources suggested.

Aboard Air Force One returning from a campaign swing through the Rocky Mountain states, Bush said the resignation came as a complete surprise to him. He said he would meet with his advisers today to talk about a replacement.

Liberals and civil rights leaders said they were saddened to see Brennan retire, and they praised his extraordinary record.

Brennan “ranks with (John) Marshall, (Oliver Wendell) Holmes and (Louis) Brandeis as the greatest justices the country has ever had,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). “No justice has more faithfully reflected our country’s defining ideal of commitment to the Bill of Rights and equal justice under law.”

“This is an incalculable loss to the law and civil liberties and to every person whose rights are threatened in the United States,” said American Civil Liberties Union President Norman Dorsen. “Justice Brennan has been a courageous, insightful and, above all, humane jurist.”

Few expected greatness of Brennan when he was quietly named to the court in the midst of the 1956 presidential campaign. Incumbent Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, trying to pick up support among Catholic and working-class Democrats, decided to appoint a little-known New Jersey judge who was an Irish-Catholic and a Democrat.

Time magazine, in reporting the nomination of Brennan, ran a brief story entitled, “A Happy Irishman.”

But Brennan quickly became a behind-the-scenes leader of what was known universally as the Warren Court, after Chief Justice Earl Warren. In the 1960s, the high court insisted on the desegregation of the public schools and colleges and expanded the rights of criminal defendants. Many Warren Court rulings, such as opinions outlawing school prayers and requiring that police read suspects the “Miranda warnings,” spurred national controversy.

After the election of Richard M. Nixon in 1968, a series of Republican appointments moved the court to the right, but not as much as most observers expected. Somehow, Brennan still kept winning victories for the liberals. In 1973, the court struck down all laws forbidding abortion. In 1978, the court upheld affirmative action for blacks and other minorities.

In 1981, when Ronald Reagan moved into the White House, the days of Brennan and the liberal court rulings were believed to be finished. But Brennan had a few surprises left. Last year, he put together a 5-4 ruling declaring the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech gave political protesters the right to burn the American flag. And on June 27, what has now proved to be Brennan’s last day on the bench, he read a 5-4 ruling upholding the power of Congress to use affirmative action in awarding contracts for radio and television stations.

Conservative lawyers and critics of the high court often marveled at Brennan’s ability to keep winning big cases, particularly in a court stacked with appointees of Republican presidents. Those who met him came to understand how he did it.

“He is a delightful person,” Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said Friday of his longtime adversary. “He will be greatly missed by his colleagues in the deliberations of the court.”

Brennan had the gifts of an Irish politician--the warm handshake, the sparkling smile and a cheery manner. In the confined and contentious environment of the court, Brennan was able, somehow, to work out compromises among his often cantankerous colleagues.

His liberal colleague, Justice Thurgood Marshall, said he was especially saddened by the news. “Without doubt, his opinions will go down in history as the greatest of the court,” said Marshall, 82. “Justice Brennan consistently has been the voice of caution and compassion in urging that this court not retreat from its constitutional mission to protect an individual’s rights of freedom of expression, to guarantee that minorities be free from discrimination and to assure the rights of those accused of crimes.”

Brennan was born in Newark, N. J., on April 25, 1906, the second of eight children. His father had been a stoker at a local brewery, but rose to become a prominent labor leader and city politician. Young Brennan earned degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School. He was comfortably settled into a career as a 50-year-old New Jersey state Supreme Court judge when Eisenhower, to his astonishment, offered him a seat on the Supreme Court.

In one sense, Brennan’s heyday came in the 1960s, when the liberals dominated the high court and expanded individual rights under the Constitution.

But many scholars say his performance since then has been more remarkable. The last Democrat to make a Supreme Court appointment came in 1967, when Lyndon B. Johnson chose Marshall. Since then, all the appointees have come from Republicans. Two of President Nixon’s appointees--Justices Harry A. Blackmun and Lewis F. Powell Jr.--usually joined Brennan in civil rights and civil liberties cases. So, too, did Justice John Paul Stevens, a moderate conservative appointed by President Gerald R. Ford.

Brennan “fought one of the greatest rear guard actions in history,” University of Michigan law professor Yale Kamisar said recently.

For nearly 20 years after others his age would have retired, Brennan continued to be the active leader of the court’s liberal wing. His colleagues and court clerks said in recent weeks that the elder justice remained intellectually sharp.

But there was no question, too, that his health was slipping. This spring, Brennan’s voice had grown so weak and gravelly that he could barely be heard in the courtroom.

In an interview with The Times, he said his doctors ordered him to cut down on his heavy schedule of lectures and traveling. But when the court term ended during the last week in June, Brennan and his wife, Mary, planned to take a cruise off Norway.

His fall at the Newark airport apparently caused the stroke that prompted his resignation, a court spokeswoman said.

In his letter to President Bush on Friday, Brennan said: “The strenuous demands of court work and the related duties required of a justice appear at this time to be incompatible with my advancing age and medical condition. I therefore retire effective immediately as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.”

In a separate statement released by the court, he described his decision to resign after 34 years as “very difficult.”

Staff writers David Lauter and Ronald J. Ostrow contributed to this story.