Rewarding Personal or Political Friends

• Harold Burton, an earlier senatorial colleague of Truman's whose service on Truman's War Investigation Committee helped bring Truman to national prominence
• Fred Vinson, Truman's political and personal friend and his Secretary of the Treasury
• Tom Clark, a personal confidant who had served as Truman's Attorney-General
• Sherman Minton, another confidant from earlier days in the Senate.

A more interesting example is that of President Lyndon Johnson's efforts in behalf of a reluctant Abe Fortas. Fortas was a close advisor of Johnson, and Johnson wanted Fortas on the Court, so much so, that he induced a sitting justice, Arthur Goldberg, to leave the Court for a position as United States ambassador to the United Nations. Fortas had refused the overtures of Johnson for such an appointment, but Johnson went ahead anyway, reportedly breaking the news to Fortas in a White House elevator ride on the way to a press conference at which the nomination announcement was made. (See Bruce Allen Murphy's Fortas: The Rise and Ruin of a Supreme Court Justice, 1988.)

Johnson didn't stop there. He pushed Fortas as a replacement for the impending retirement of Chief Justice Earl Warren, but opposition to an increasingly unpopular Johnson, the anticipation by Republicans of a Richard Nixon Republican presidency, and opposition by Southern Democrats to the Warren Court and the liberal Abe Fortas doomed that effort. The strategy of Warren and Johnson to replace Warren with the liberal Fortas backfired, resulting in President Nixon naming four justices to the Supreme Court within three years. While all of this happened in the later 1960's on into the early 70's, the sitting Chief Justice, William Rehnquist, owes his position on the Court to that botched effort of President Johnson to name his friend to the Chief Justice position.