Past marijuana use doomed the Supreme Court nomination of Douglas Ginsburg, chosen Oct. 29 by President Reagan, who urged the Senate to resist 'pressure politics' and quickly confirm the conservative federal appeals judge.
Six days after senators rejected the president's first choice, Robert H. Bork, by the largest margin ever against a Supreme Court nominee, Reagan presented Ginsburg, a surprise selection.
'I've been impressed by the fact that in academia, in government and on the bench, Judge Ginsburg has been enormously popular with colleagues of all political persuasions,' Reagan said.
But within a week of his nomination, Ginsburg doomed prospects of his Senate confirmation by admitting he smoked marijuana as recently as eight years ago - once as a student in the 1960s and occasionally in the 1970s, as late as 1979, when he was a law student and a Harvard law professor.
Reagan's public posture was to stick by his high court choice, but support began to erode quickly in the Senate and behind the scenes in the administration following the marijuana revelation.
Amid the turmoil, news reports surfaced that in the 1960s Ginsburg had dropped out of college to run a computer dating service, 'Operation Match,' that was investigated by the Better Business Bureau and the U.S. Postal Service after customers complained they 'got nothing' before it went bankrupt in 1967, the Boston Herald reported in a copyright story Nov. 7.
Ginsberg, who dropped out of Cornell University in 1965 to help form Compatability Research, Inc., was an official of the dating service 'between 1965 and 1968' before returning to Cornell, Justice Department spokesman Terry Eastland told the Herald.
Further complicating his high court prospects, especially among extreme Senate conservatives, was White House acknowledgement that Ginsburg's wife, Hallee, an obstetrician, had performed two abortions while in medical school.
By nightfall Friday, Nov. 6, Education Secretary William Bennett, with Reagan's approval, called the judge to tell him his confirmation was no longer 'winnable' and to urge him to withdraw his name from consideration.
And by the following afternoon, Saturday, Nov. 7, Ginsburg, his decision made, arrived at the White House to request his name be withdrawn from nomination to the high court.
Had he been confirmed, Ginsburg would have replaced Justice Lewis Powell, who retired in late June. At 41, he would have been the youngest member of the current high court.
Ginsburg was a clerk for liberal Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall before becoming a professor at Harvard Law School, where he specialized in antitrust and banking law.
That background prepared him to serve in the Justice Department in 1985 and 1986 under Attorney General Edwin Meese as chief of the antitrust division. In 1986, the Senate confirmed his nomination to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia without dissent.
Bork also is a judge on that bench, as was Antonin Scalia before his confirmation as a Supreme Court justice in 1986. In legal circles, the court often is called the second-highest in the land because its docket is filled with cases that frequently create national precedents.
Key lobbying groups who led the fight against Bork urged the Senate to approach Ginsburg with equal caution.
'It is essential that the Senate and the American people take the time to conduct a full and fair review of this nominees's record,' said Arthur Cropp, executive director of People for the American Way, a major anti-Bork lobby.
Senate Republicans generally applauded the selection but other GOP senators and some Democrats said they were unfamiliar with Ginsburg.
'Based on what I know, I'm prepared to support Judge Ginsburg,' said Senate Republican leader Robert Dole of Kansas. 'Based on information we're received, this man is well qualified. ... If he's confirmed he'll have a long, hopefully distinguished career on the Supreme Court.'
Meese called Ginsburg 'an excellent judge who will make an outstanding associate justice.'
Although Reagan said art the time of Bork's imminent defeat he would choose a new nominee 'they'll object to just as much,' the selection of Ginsburg was seen as a move aimed at winning quick confirmation.
Reagan called on the Senate 'not to permit a repetition of the campaign of pressure politics' that accompanied the Bork nomination, which he called 'a disservice to the court and to the nation.'
The American Bar Association gave Ginsburg a unanimous rating of 'qualified' when he was nominated to the appeals court in 1986 -- the lowest rating for an appeals court, which was given because of Ginsburg's lack of courtroom experience.
The ABA review committee was investigating Ginsburg's qualifications for the Supreme Court.
Ginsburg would renew the unofficial tradition of a 'Jewish seat' on the high court that started with the nomination of Louis Brandeis in 1916 and lasted until Abe Fortas resigned in 1969. Other Jewish justices were Benjamin Cardozo, Feliz Frankfurter and Arthur Goldberg.
The nomination of Ginsburg was an apparent triumph for Meese, who urged Reagan to choose someone who, like Bork, believes in the judicial philosophy of 'original intent,' which states that civil and individual rights only exist if they expressly outlined in the Constitution.
Ginsburg, just months after becoming a judge, was a member of the appeals court panel that upheld Meese's parallel 'back-up' appointment of Iran-Contra independent prosecutor Lawrence Walsh.
Ginsburg was born in Chicago on May 25, 1946. After graduating from Chicago's Latin School in 1963, he earned a bachelor's degree from Cornell in 1970 and law degree from the University of Chicago in 1973. He interrupted his undergraduate studies at Cornell to operate the 'Operation Match' dating service.
He taught at Harvard Law School from 1975 to 1983, specializing in antitrust and economic regulation, where according to a report in the Boston Globe he received overall poor ratings from his students.
In the fall of 1978, for example, his labor law course was rated the lowest in 'professor sensitivity' out of nearly 150 courses, according to ratings maintained by the Board of Student Advisers. 'Seven students flatly stated that this was the worst teacher and/or class they had ever encountered,' the board wrote in 1978.
At 41, he would have been the fourth youngest justice ever, had he been confirmed -- older only than William Douglas, 40, who served in this century, and William Johnson, 32, and Joseph Story, 32, who served in the early 19th century.
He is the author of 'Regulation of Broadcasting: Law and Policy Toward Radio, Television and Cable Communications,' 1979; and 'Antitrust, Uncertainty, and Technological Innovation,' 1980. He also co-edited 'Government Technology and the Future of the Automobile,' published in 1980.
He lists as his hobbies historic preservation and antiques.
Ginsburg married Claudia De Secundy in May 1968, a week after his 22nd birthday. They had one daughter, Jessica, in 1970 and divorced in September 1980.
He and his second wife, Hallee, have a daughter, aged 2.
