WASHINGTON -- Justice Potter Stewart announced Thursday he is retiring after 23 years on the Supreme Court -- giving President Reagan a chance to shift the philosophical balance of the high court, and possibly put a woman on the bench.
The 66-year-old Stewart said he will leave the court July 3, at the end of the current term. He gave no reason for his surprise decision, which created intense speculation over who Reagan would tap for the nation's highest tribunal.
Stewart, said to be in good health, is considered a 'swing' or center member on the conservative-liberal spectrum of the nine-man court and he has defied attempts to predict his position on key constitutional issues.
The search for a successor began a month ago after Stewart visited Reagan to deliver personally a letter informing the president of his decision, a White House spokesman said Thursday.
'It is time to go,' said the letter, dated May 18. Stewart, a registered Republican, added he hoped the Supreme Court 'will be in good and wise hands' after his departure.
Deputy White House press secretary Larry Speakes said the president telephoned Stewart after the justice made his plans public. In a letter, Reagan said Stewart had shown 'unfailing dedication to the court, to the highest standards of the legal profession, and to the fundamental principles and protections of our Constitution.'
David Gergen, White House communications director, said although no decision has been made, Reagan 'is very much sticking by' his campaign promise to appoint a woman to one of the first vacancies he must fill on the Supreme Court.
President Eisenhower appointed Stewart to the high court in 1958. The lifetime position now pays $88,700 a year. Supreme Court nominees must be approved by the Senate.
Speakes said the search for a replacement -- directed by Attorney General William French Smith -- began informally after Stewart visited Reagan and is now going on 'in earnest.'
In addition to consulting with the American Bar Association, Speakes said Smith will also take into account the views of Reagan's 'Kitchen Cabinet,' a group of the president's longtime backers in California.
The president was questioned about Stewart's retirement as he was going to the Old Executive Office building Thursday.
'There will be an announcement shortly' on a replacement, Reagan said, 'We won't leave that vacant.'
In a campaign speech last fall, Reagan said, 'One of the first Supreme Court vacancies in my administration will be filled by one of the most qualified women I can possibly find.'
But asked Thursday if his nominee would be a woman, the president said, 'No decision has been made yet.' Was he looking for a woman, he was asked. 'Always,' Reagan replied.
Among women mentioned as potential appointees are Carla Hills, 46, former House and Urban Development secretary; Elizabeth Hanford Dole, 44, former Federal Trade Commissioner and currently White House liaison for public interest groups; Rita Hauser, 46, a New York lawyer and a former U.S. delegate to the United Nations; Cornelia Kennedy, 57, a judge on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where Stewart also sat; and Anne Armstrong, 53, former ambassador to Great Britain and White House counselor to Richard Nixon.
Among men prominently mentioned are William Clark, a close personal friend of Reagan's who left the California Supreme Court to become deputy secretary of state; Robert Bork, former solicitor general under Richard Nixon, and Smith, another longtime firend of the president.
Stewart, a serious cigarette smoker, is in good health and is known as a prodigious worker -- working Saturdays at the office, and nearly every night and Sundays at home.
His secretary Carolyn Sand said: 'He is in good health and that's one of the reason he is retiring.'
He once said the Surpeme Court 'is the best job the American people have to offer.'
The somewhat chunky Stewart, a man of plain features, is fond of quips and often lightened oral arguments with offhand comments that brought laughter from fellow justices, counsel and the gallery.
His retirement leaves the first opening on the court since President Ford appointed Justice John Paul Stevens in 1975 to replace William O. Douglas, long the court's leading liberal.
President Nixon appointed four members of the court -- Chief Justice Warren Burger, and Justices Lewis Powell, William Rehnquist and Harry Blackmun. There were no vacancies while Jimmy Carter was president.
Stewart plans to hold a news conference Friday -- the first such event by a justice since Douglas met with the press a month before his retirement.
In a letter to his colleagues, Stewart said he hoped 'to serve from time to time as a member of the federal judiciary, but I cannot look foward to serving ever again with you.'
He was praised by his brethren.
'Justice Stewart will rank among the ablest justices who have served on this court. I have particularly admired his high sense of institutional responsibility,' Powell said.
Rehnquist said Stewart had telephoned to congratulate him the night of his October 1971 nomination. 'From that day forward, what was at first a professional relationship has ripened into a friendship which, for my part, I deeply cherish.'
Stewart's recent financial disclosure statement showed him to be the second wealthiest member of the court with assets of up to $2.4 million.
He will retire on full salary and is eligible to be assigned by the chief justice to sit on any federal court. Former Justice Tom Clark took such assignments after he retired from the high court in 1967.
Stewart often split his vote between conservative and liberal sides of issues. He joined the majority in the court's landmark 1973 ruling protecting a woman's right to an abortion, but stood alone in dissent against the decision outlawing school prayer.
He also dissented from the 1966 Miranda ruling requiring police to specifically warn suspects of their rights.
In the court's 1978 first 'reverse discrimination' case, Stewart joined a group endorsing Allan Bakke's admission into medical school. He was conservative in the area of affirmative action.
He dissented from the court's 1980 ruling upholding a set-aside for minority contractors enacted by Congress. 'Our Constituion is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,' he quoted from an 1896 opinion.
Earlier this week, Stewart went against two court rulings that set back the administration's effort to curb federal regulation of business.
He filed a separate dissent to the court's ruling upholding strict federal controls on worker exposure to cotton dust, and he was the lone dissenter to a ruling the same day upholding warrantless inspections of stone quarries.
Eisenhower appointed Stewart to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1954. At 39, he was the youngest federal judge in the country. He was named to the high court at age 43.
A graduate of Yale Law School, he had been in private law practice in Cincinnati and served on the city council and as vice-mayor in the 1950s. In one controversial incident, Stewart refused to vote for a moment of silence at a city council meeting in memory of the fifth anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt's death.
He explained his vote was based on a belief that the city council should not be involved in such political activity but should attend to the 'best interests' of the people.
