THE NEW JUSTICE

Nominated last week by President Eisenhower to fill the Supreme Court seat of retiring Associate Justice Stanley Reed (TIME, Feb. 11): Charles Evans Whittaker of Kansas City, Mo.

Early Life. Born Feb. 22, 1901 in northeastern Kansas, to a hard-working farm couple on their 320-acre place (half of it homesteaded by Whittaker's grandfather) six miles south of the Doniphan County seat of Troy. Growing up on the farm, Charles Evans Whittaker got his first education in a one-room, one-teacher country schoolhouse, got his first income from trapping skunks at $3 a pelt, got his first setback at the Troy high school, when he dropped out before graduation because the six-mile trip on horseback was too long.

Charles Whittaker began the recovery at 19: with $700 earned from trapping and plowing, he went to Kansas City, persuaded the Kansas City School of Law to admit him ("I have loved the law from my earliest recollection") despite his lack of formal training, graduated in 1924 after five hectic years in which he attended law classes, took private tutoring to make up his high school deficiencies and worked as a part-time office boy in one of the city's leading law firms, then called Watson, Gage & Ess.

Legal Career. Practiced law with the firm after graduation, concentrating on corporation cases; in 1930 he became a junior partner, in 1932 (aged 31) a full partner. After building up a reputation as a "lawyer's lawyer" among his Midwestern and Washington colleagues, lifelong Republican Whittaker was elected president of the Missouri Bar in 1953.

The Bench. Appointed by President Eisenhower to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri in July 1954, to the U.S.'s second-highest court--the U.S. Court of Appeals (for the 8th Circuit, including Minnesota, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, North and South Dakota) in June 1956. In both courts, hardworking, scholarly Judge Whittaker did much to clear up lagging dockets, and his closely reasoned, clearly stated opinions won favorable attention throughout the Justice Department.

Family & Personality. Married 28 years, Methodist Whittaker has three sons: Charles Keith, an intern at Kansas City General Hospital; Kent, a Dartmouth College senior headed for the law; and Gary, a senior at Rockhurst [Jesuit] High School, which his brothers also attended ("the Jesuits are fine teachers"). A soft-spoken yet gregarious man, slender (140 Ibs., 5 ft. 9 in.) Judge Whittaker enjoys social life when he finds time for it, is a lifelong baseball (Kansas City Athletics) fan, hobbies around with his 160-acre beef cattle (Herefords) farm 20 miles north of Kansas City.

Philosophy & the Law. While still a practicing lawyer, Judge Whittaker made a concise statement of the legal philosophy that has served him since: "Justice cannot be produced through any system of procedures alone. In the main it is, and must always be, the product of long hours of hard, diligent, painstaking labor by highly competent, experienced, careful and practical lawyers . . . The practice of law is a deliberate science and must be recognized as such. Its product will not be any better, regardless of the system used, than the lawyers who do its work."

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