Some Ask How Thomas Will Treat Opponents : Fairness: Pain of hearings seen as tilting him against Democratic Congress, liberals, rights groups, the press.

For two days on the witness stand last week, Judge Clarence Thomas raged at those he said had sought to “destroy” him. Senate Democrats, liberal interest groups and the press, he declared, were conspiring to “put me and my family through . . . this kind of living hell.”

So searing was the experience, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee at the height of its special inquiry into charges of sexual harassment, that the nominee it had considered in its earlier confirmation hearings no longer existed. “The person you knew, whether you voted for me or against me, died,” he said.

Without doubt, the scrutiny of Clarence Thomas, with its raw emotion and brutal dissection of sensitive aspects of personal conduct--displayed for all the world to see by the pitiless eye of television--has no precedent in the annals of the Supreme Court.

And now that the Senate has voted to place him on the high court by the narrowest of margins, key questions remain:

Can Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas put behind him the rage and pain of the last 10 days and act as an impartial jurist on cases involving those groups he thinks tried to destroy him?

Can the new justice act as an unbiased referee between the Republican White House and the Democratic Congress? Can he fairly decide cases brought by liberal groups, civil rights organizations or disputes involving the press?

Many court observers doubted it Tuesday.

“Given the volcanic language he used, and how he repeated the accusations against the liberal groups, I just don’t see how he can just put that aside now,” said Bruce Fein, a former Ronald Reagan Administration lawyer and conservative legal analyst. “These weren’t isolated comments. He said them over and over. I don’t think he can be impartial, and the public won’t think he’s impartial either.”

Although he is a conservative, Fein thought Thomas should be defeated because “there will always be a cloud over him.”

University of Minnesota law professor Suzanna Sherry said that Justice Thomas would have to be “superhuman” to put aside his anger entirely. “I think it will leave a mark on him,” she said, although it “may be hard to tell from the outside.”

Prior to the sexual harassment charges, Thomas had been expected to line up with the high court’s conservatives. In speeches given before his nomination, he had constantly taken the side of the executive branch in disputes involving Congress. If he votes that way on the Supreme Court, no one will be able to know for sure whether his confirmation ordeal influenced him, she said.

“We don’t know much about his views on the First Amendment and freedom of the press, but I think it’s likely he won’t take kindly to the press,” she said.

However, the story of Justice Hugo Black offers a more optimistic possibility. In 1937, soon after he was confirmed as a justice of the Supreme Court, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette disclosed that the former Alabama senator had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Black, who had been vacationing in Europe, returned home and confronted the issue directly. In a national radio address, he denounced “the planned and concerted attack” on his reputation. He admitted that he had once belonged to the klan but said that he had long since resigned. After a time, the furor died down, and Justice Black went on to become a leader in pressing for civil rights and civil liberties.

“He spent more than 30 years on the court living down that story,” said Duke University law professor Walter Dellinger, a former law clerk to Justice Black.

Thomas will not be the only member of the current court to arrive under something of a cloud. In 1971, several Phoenix civil rights activists accused Supreme Court nominee William H. Rehnquist of aggressively challenging the voting credentials of blacks and Latinos as a Republican poll watcher in the early 1960s. Rehnquist categorically denied the “voter harassment” charges and was confirmed by the Senate on a 68-26 vote.

In 1986, when he was nominated to be chief justice, even more Phoenix activists and a former U.S. attorney testified that they had seen Rehnquist challenging black voters. When the justice stuck by his flat denial of the charges, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee accused Rehnquist of lying.

But Rehnquist was confirmed again, on a 65-33 vote.

As chief justice, Rehnquist has led an increasingly conservative court that has narrowed the scope of civil rights laws, restricted the rights of criminal defendants and given states somewhat more authority to regulate abortion.

Thomas is expected to join the court’s solid conservatives, including Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter and Rehnquist.

Justice Byron R. White and Sandra Day O’Connor have had moderately conservative voting records. The two most “liberal” justices are really moderates--Midwestern Republicans Harry A. Blackmun, a 1970 appointee of President Richard M. Nixon, and John Paul Stevens, a 1975 appointee of President Gerald R. Ford.

Justice Thomas will soon face a case involving sexual harassment. In December, the court will hear arguments on whether a female student who is subjected to sexual harassment by a teacher may seek damages from the school district.

In the case (Christine Franklin vs. Gwinnett County, Ga., School District), her lawyers argue that the federal law against sex discrimination in schools and colleges implies that victims can win damages. A federal appeals court said the law did not include damages for victims.

As chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Thomas took a strong stand against sexual harassment in the workplace. He urged the Reagan Administration to press the high court to rule that women can suffer illegal sexual harassment even if they do not suffer any “job consequences.”

Thomas may soon face a sensitive question involving those who are accused of sex crimes. Most states have enacted so-called “rape shield” laws to allow alleged rape victims to testify in court without having their private lives exposed by aggressive defense lawyers. But some rape defendants contend that those laws violate their constitutional rights to confront their accusers in court and to disclose their motives for lying about such charges.

Although lower courts have ruled on the issue, the Supreme Court has not done so yet. If the justices agree to hear such a case, it could put Thomas in a delicate spot.

Having been accused of sexual misconduct in a nationally televised hearing, the justice might have a special empathy for the rights of the accused. But, having expressed outrage at attempts to expose his private life, Thomas may also see the need to protect witnesses from questioning about their private lives.

In many of the most significant cases before the court, it is common for legal interest groups--including the American Civil Liberties Union, the NOW Legal Defense Fund or the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund--to submit briefs to state their viewpoints and supply the justices with information that can influence the outcome of a case. These are amicus curiae, or friend-of-the-court, briefs.

But some women’s rights lawyers wondered Tuesday whether Thomas would view their briefs as coming from a “friend of the court.”

“I’m worried whether he can be impartial. I hope, for the sake of the country and of the court, that he can put this behind him,” said Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center.

The ACLU, although a liberal group, did not take a position on the Thomas nomination. In Utah and Louisiana, its attorneys are opposing new state laws that challenge the Roe vs. Wade ruling, which legalized abortion. Within two years, the justices will be faced with deciding whether to uphold or reverse the constitutional rights of women to choose abortion.

Rachael N. Pine, an ACLU attorney working on the abortion questions, said she is concerned as to whether Thomas can approach such cases with an open mind.

“Given his freewheeling attacks on the liberal groups and his impassioned bitterness, I guess I’d have to say I’m skeptical” that he can be impartial, she said. “We just have to hope that Justice Thomas has the integrity to separate out that personal bitterness, or, if necessary, to recuse himself from those cases.”