President Richard Nixon had the opportunity to fill two Supreme Court seats in 1969 when Chief Justice Earl Warren retired and Associate Justice Abe Fortas resigned. The Senate approved Nixon’s choice of Warren Burger as chief justice, but filling Fortas’s vacated seat proved controversial. Wanting a more conservative court, Nixon sought a strict constructionist. The Senate rejected two nominees—Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell—before finally confirming Harry Blackmun in 1970.

“As we recall, this was perhaps the hardest fought nomination in over a generation, and it was made doubly difficult because the matter that concerned us centered on the very sensitive issue of judicial ethics.”

Senator Birch E. Bayh of Indiana, on the Nomination of G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court, March 16, 1970