THE NINE JUSTICES

Earl Warren, 66, appointed Chief Justice by President Eisenhower in 1953. Son of a railroad worker, raised in Bakersfield, Calif., took his law degree at the University of California (1912). He became Alameda County (Oakland) district attorney in 1925, quickly made a name as a racket-buster, was elected state attorney general in 1938, but his courtroom experience nevertheless was limited. Republican Warren was elected California's governor three times with labor as well as business support, was a good, if plodding administrator, endeared himself to the faculty of the University of California by standing firm against loyalty oaths for teachers. Hearty, outgoing, hard-working Baptist Warren never before sat on the bench, is rated still short on substantive approach to law, long on sweeping liberal judgments.

Hugo La Fayette Black, 71, President Roosevelt's first (and then-furiously opposed) appointee to the bench. Grew up in poverty in Alabama, studied his law at the University of Alabama, built a practice on hard-luck clients, served briefly as police magistrate, entered the Senate in 1927. There he fought hard for New Deal, built a reputation as a relentless Senate investigator of lobbying and trusts, stood solidly on liberal side of the line despite fact that he had, at 37, been member of Ku Klux Klan. In the court Baptist Black was a novice in constitutional law, but studied incessantly, developed diamond-hard technical knowledge, has held the line for triple-distilled civil liberties and social interpretation of law. He often turns an angry purple at indefatigable Felix Frankfurter. Scholarly, quick-witted, he is immensely shy off-bench.

Felix Frankfurter, 74, appointed by President Roosevelt in 1939. Vienna-born, came to the U.S. at twelve, worked his way from $4-a-week delivery boy's job into top of the law class at Harvard (1906), worked briefly as a junior in a Manhattan law firm, then for assorted Government agencies, returned to teach at Harvard in 1914. Even before Roosevelt's first term, Frankfurter exhorted students to seek public service, after 1932 Frankfurter students--"Happy Hot Dogs" --were spotted throughout federal agencies. F.D.R. finally pushed the Harvard chair away from the reluctant, pince-nezed little (5 ft. 5 in.) professor, put him on the Supreme Court, where his authoritarian, powerful mind, attention to small points, endless jabbering jabs at pleading lawyers have made him renowned for brilliance and profound regard for constitutional procedure.

William Orville Douglas, 58, appointed by F.D.R. in 1939. Born in Minnesota, raised in Yakima, Wash., sheep-herded eastward to work his way through Columbia Law School with topflight record. Practiced in Wall Street, taught briefly at Columbia, brilliantly at Yale. A born rebel, became chairman of Securities and Exchange Commission in 1937, thereupon unleashed, in his own word, "sulphurous" attack on Wall Street. Although he had never been a judge, Roosevelt appointed him to the court on the retirement of Louis Brandeis. On the bench, pencil behind ear, hair awry, Presbyterian Douglas became a dauntless proponent of labor, civil rights, wrote armloads of decisions. Holding fast to his basic position on the left, he became, with Black, the court's leading dissenter.

Harold Hits Burton, 69, onetime Republican Senator from Ohio and Harry Truman's first presidential appointee to court (1945). Massachusetts-born and raised (Bowdoin College; pole vault, football, Phi Beta Kappa), studied law at Harvard, practiced (principal clients: utility companies) in Ohio, was Cleveland's mayor, never a judge. Fought hard for his senatorial nomination against opposition of State G.O.P. Boss Ed Schorr (Burton: "I'm an off-Schorr Republican"), won Senate stripes with conscientious work, judicial temperament. Husky, square-faced Unitarian Burton joined the bench as a cautious moderate, soon became a key conservative. He is attentive to detail, has been tough and sharp in his dissents to such recent Warren court decisions as the Kreuger case and the Du Pont case.

Tkomas Campbell Clark, 57, appointed by Truman in 1949, with backing for the job by Chief Justice Fred Vinson because, said the wags, Vinson wanted somebody on the court who knew less law than he did. Texas Democrat, Presbyterian, Clark built a lucrative practice in Dallas after he finished Virginia Military Institute and University of Texas Law School, politicked his way to Washington and various Justice Department jobs until Truman made him U.S. Attorney General in 1945. He spoke out invariably for federal powers v. local and state powers, fought the states in tidelands oil in 1948 despite normal affliction of Texitis. Vigorously pursuing Communists, and at times causing furors from liberals over loyalty programs, Clark assumed the robe with conservative outlook, jaunty bow tie, quiet demeanor, and a mind totally lacking--but rapidly gaining--in judicial experience.

Jokn Marshall Harlan, 58, Ike's second court appointee (1954), grandson of namesake Associate Justice (1877-1911) who issued fiery dissent ("Our Constitution is color-blind") in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson segregation case. Born in Chicago, he was polite lad: at Chicago's Latin School, recalls a former classmate, he was "almost frighteningly well-mannered." A Rhodes scholar after Princeton, he passed bar exams after New York Law School, became a distinguished corporation lawyer, devoted 30 years to trial work before Ike named him to Second Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in 1954. A Republican, fiercely independent on the bench, he swings between liberal and conservative blocs. Tall (6 ft. 1 in.), Presbyterian Harlan is quiet, methodical (he devoted eight pages, in Smith Act opinion, to meaning of the word "organize") is a "lawyer's lawyer."

William Joseph Brennan Jr., 51, appointed by Ike last September. Born in Newark, educated at University of Pennsylvania and at Harvard Law School. A Democrat, Roman Catholic, appointed to State Superior Court and in 1952 to State Supreme Court, became a protege of late great Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice Arthur Vanderbilt, though he frequently dissented from his mentor. When he was an associate justice in Jersey, lawyers found him neither liberal nor conservative. Respected for sharp questioning, clearly written, moderate opinions. But following U.S. Supreme Court decisions on Du Pont and Jencks (TIME, June 17) Brennan's wild-swinging majority opinions prompted one Washington lawyer to say: "The New Jersey bar is ready to tear Brennan's hide off. His opinion in Jencks was full of loose wording . . . Many lawyers think he went in an extreme."

Charles Evans Whittaker, 57, Ike's latest appointee (last March), still the court's big question mark; last week's cases had been argued prior to his appointment. Born on a Kansas farm, he had little formal education before sweet-talking his way into Kansas City School of Law, after graduation, practiced corporation law in Kansas City, Mo. Able, scholarly, he was appointed by Ike to the U.S. District Court in Missouri, then appointed to the Eighth Federal U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Lifelong Republican, his opinions were lauded by the bar for their reasoning. Methodist Whittaker views himself as dispassionate, his aim "the Biblical goal: love man, deal justly and walk humbly." Dry-humored, undramatic, a legal technician, he may well be found on the conservative side, but his robe is too new to detect any wrinkles.

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