
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, April 21, 1994                   TAG: 9404230003
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

COURT VACANCY

RICHARD ARNOLD is not exactly a household name. Few Americans outside of legal circles are likely to have heard of him, except maybe in his home state of Arkansas.

That was true, at least, until Justice Harry Blackmun announced his retirement from the Supreme Court of the United States, and Arnold's name started appearing on the short list of possible successors mentioned in news stories about the court vacancy.

Arnold is a federal appeals court judge from Little Rock, Ark., and that's the problem. Not that he is on the appellate bench, but that he is on the bench in Little Rock, President Clinton's political stomping grounds not so very long ago.

With Whitewater's currents buffeting him, some of Clinton's advisers tell him, the last thing he should do is make an appointment that could be criticized as cronyism.

Yet these advisers express no other reservation about Arnold than that he is an Arkansan. In fact, one White House official describes his credentials as "unassailable," and his legal scholarship is admired both by conservative writer William F. Buckley and retired Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, a liberal.

Surely the nomination of such a professionally esteemed jurist could not be credibly attacked as mere Arkansan cronyism. Not among those old boys in the U.S. Senate. Not without the distinct appearance that scoring political points was more urgent than appointing a strong justice.

It may be ironically comforting to Arkansans - insulted as backward during the presidential campaign and more recently by allegations of small-town corruption - that an important, national decision might rest on the premise that Arkansas is too powerful a state. But this is beside the point.

Perhaps there would be other problems with an Arnold nomination. As noted, neither he nor his judicial record are widely known outside of legal circles. Heaven forbid, he might even have a nanny lurking in some closet filled with political skeletons. He shouldn't be nominated if better candidates are available.

Neither, though, should he be denied the appointment simply because he's from Arkansas.

by CNB