Exit From The Right

LONG BEFORE TODAY'S POWERFUL PHALANX OF REpublican-nominated Justices began to dominate the U.S. Supreme Court and push it sharply to the right, Justice Byron White voted to nudge it in that general direction. Last Friday, after 31 years on the high bench, the moderate-to-conservative Kennedy appointee -- a legal ace, Rhodes scholar and former star football player -- announced that he would step down at the end of the court's current term this summer.

The departure will have a major impact. For the first time in a quarter- century, Democrats will have a chance to put their man or woman on the court and brake the bench's conservative drift. White, 75, one of the original two dissenters in Roe v. Wade and a consistent foe of the constitutional right to abortion, opposed broad use of affirmative action, favored greater accommodation between church and state and regularly sided with police on law- and-order issues. President Clinton promptly promised to find a top notch replacement with "good judgment" and "a big heart."