Clinton Aides Still Adding Names to Supreme Court List : Judiciary: With no alternative to Mario Cuomo in mind, the selection of a successor to Justice White may be delayed several weeks.

Ever since New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo unexpectedly withdrew his candidacy for the vacant Supreme Court seat, President Clinton and his staff have been scrambling to find a fallback nominee, according to aides and legal activists.

In recent weeks, the President’s staff has been adding names to a rather long list, they say, instead of focusing on a few finalists.

“They’re still getting suggestions and pulling together profiles,” said one attorney who has closely followed the selection process.

“They didn’t have a second choice” after Cuomo backed out in early April, said one Senate aide.

As a result, the White House, which once had expected to announce a nominee for the court job by late April, may not have a selection ready for several more weeks, the sources said.

For his first Supreme Court nominee, the new President had hoped to name a prominent public figure, rather than an obscure judge whose name would be unknown to ordinary Americans, as has been the case with recent Republican nominees. Clinton also wanted a liberal who, as one aide put it, could bring a “moral dimension” to the law, as had the late Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Cuomo seemed to fit the bill perfectly and Clinton was ready to offer him the job in early April. But the unpredictable New York governor told the President that he was not interested.

A week later, Judith Kaye, New York’s chief judge, also announced that she did not want the Supreme Court nomination. She too had been a favorite among White House aides.

Left without a consensus candidate, Clinton urged his aides to cast a wide net for possible nominees. One lesson of the President’s prolonged search for an attorney general and the eventual selection of Janet Reno was that the best candidate may not be well known to activists in Washington.

Although Reno had earned a solid reputation in South Florida for her work as the Dade County prosecutor, her name was not on the tips of many tongues in the nation’s capital six months ago.

In recent days, for example, White House aides have examined women judges on state supreme courts. Shirley Abrahamson, a liberal member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, has been added to the White House list.

“They are really looking for another Janet Reno, someone who will come in and wow everyone,” an interest group attorney said.

“If I had to bet, I would put my money on a female state supreme court judge,” said a Senate aide.

But none of the legal activists, Senate aides or even Administration officials who have followed the selection process said they thought they could guess the outcome. It all depends on the President and Hillary Rodham Clinton, the two White House lawyers who will make the decision.

Both Yale law graduates, Clinton and his wife know the law and have wide acquaintances among lawyers and judges. By contrast, Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush paid little attention to possible Supreme Court nominees and usually chose a candidate from, perhaps, two top finalists selected by their legal advisers.

But because of crises ranging from Bosnia to Waco, Tex., Clinton has given the selection process only sporadic attention of late, officials said.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) recently has voiced concern about the delay in selecting a nominee. Biden said his committee needs to have a name by mid-May to meet its schedule of having a new justice confirmed by August, when the Senate adjourns for its summer recess.

The opening on the high court was created when Justice Byron R. White announced that he was resigning at the end of the current court term, usually late June or early July.

Here are some top candidates, listed in alphabetical order, who are being considered at the White House, according to sources:

* Richard Arnold, 57. A well-respected judge on the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, he is a friend of the Clintons who lives in Little Rock, Ark. He has been criticized by women’s rights advocates for refusing to apply a state anti-discrimination law to a male-only Jaycees chapter in Minnesota, a ruling overturned by the Supreme Court.

* Stephen Breyer, 54. A U.S. appeals court judge in Boston. A former aide to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), he is highly regarded by Senate Republicans. Aides note that he is Jewish and that the high court has not had a Jewish justice since Abe Fortas resigned in 1969.

* Jose Cabranes, 52. A federal district judge in New Haven, Conn., he is known by Yale lawyers who are Clinton friends. Although he gets high marks from some activists, the Latino community has been lukewarm about him, sources said.

* Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 60. She is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington. Although a counsel for the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project during the 1970s, she recently gave a speech criticizing the 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling as too expansive.

* Amalya L. Kearse, 55. She is a judge on the U.S. appeals court in New York. She wins praise from liberals for her decisions on civil rights issues and from conservatives for her rulings on business law.

* Stephanie Seymour, 52. A highly regarded judge from Tulsa, Okla., who sits on the U.S. appeals court based in Denver, she was appointed by President Jimmy Carter and is considered liberal.

* Patricia Wald, 64. A chief judge of the U.S. appeals court in Washington, she was Clinton’s first choice to head the Justice Department and a favorite among liberal interest groups. But her refusal to take the attorney general’s post, plus her age, may limit her chances for the court nomination.