THE JUDICIARY: Bench Room for Two

For more than three months, powerful politicians and eminent jurists had been engaging in an Olympian tussle over a prospective appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (New York, Connecticut, Vermont). Connecticut Senators Prescott Bush and William Purtell, good Republicans both, wanted the job to go to Connecticut’s Republican ex-U.S. Senator (1939-45) John A. Danaher, 54, who has been practicing law and lobbying in Washington. Judge Thomas Swan, who made the vacancy by retiring, and retired Circuit Judges Learned and Augustus Hand were all for Connecticut’s Carroll C. Hincks, 63, senior judge of the Federal District Court for Connecticut (TIME, Aug. 31). Last week President Eisenhower found a neat solution. He nominated Danaher to be a judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, to succeed Judge James M. Proctor, who died Sept. 17. Then he nominated Judge Hincks for the Second Circuit bench. Both judgeships carry approximately the same prestige and the same salary, $17,500 a year.