Thomas Confirmed, 52 to 48 : It Is Now a ‘Time for Healing,’ the New Justice Says : Judiciary: The Senate vote rejects charges of sexual harassment. The margin of approval is the narrowest in this century for a Supreme Court nominee.

WASHINGTON —  Judge Clarence Thomas, who said that he had endured “a thousand deaths” in his unprecedentedly contentious confirmation process, became the second black jurist to serve on the Supreme Court Tuesday, winning Senate approval by the narrowest margin in this century.

In confirming Thomas by a 52-48 vote, the Senate rejected sexual harassment charges lodged by Anita Faye Hill, a University of Oklahoma law professor who once served as Thomas’ special assistant.

The reaction to the confirmation was swift, if predictable. Thomas’ opponents lamented the outcome and supporters lauded it. It was a clearly pleased, but seemingly subdued Thomas, who, accompanied by his wife, Virginia, stood outside his suburban Washington home shortly after the vote was completed and quietly thanked God “that the Senate approved me in this process.”

Standing under an umbrella on a wet and dreary fall evening, the new associate justice of the Supreme Court said: “This is more a time for healing, not a time for anger or for animus or animosity.”

Hill’s accusation and the tortuous road that the Senate Judiciary Committee took in examining it, laid bare for intensely public debate some of the most sensitive issues of race and sex in American society today.

The three-day public spectacle played out before the committee and television cameras also inspired what undoubtedly will be a continuing debate over the way the Senate carries out its constitutional responsibilities to give the President “advice and consent” on high-level nominations--especially the Supreme Court.

For many lawmakers, stung by charges of insensitivity to women and pained by the damage done to the central characters in the drama, the vote was a time of political trial and deep introspection.

In the end, however, almost all the senators stuck to positions announced before the three days of hearings that both gripped and repelled the American public.

In Norman, Okla., Hill accepted Thomas’ elevation calmly. She told a press conference that “the issue of sexual harassment is now part of a dialogue.” She said that she has received letters and cards from many people concerned about the issue of sexual harassment.

“Women, men, women who have experienced the same thing have written and said now for the first time they could talk about it,” she said.

She also said that she does not want to become a symbol. “I think there are so many women out here who have experienced the same thing I experienced that we don’t need symbols. This is a real issue, this isn’t a symbolic issue.”

President Bush, who staunchly defended Thomas--who has been serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia--throughout the investigation but maintained a careful distance from those attacking his accuser, hailed the Senate vote.

“The nation and the court benefit from having a man of principle who is sensitive to the problems and opportunities facing all Americans,” Bush said in a written statement released moments after the Senate vote concluded.

Bush, who called the native Georgian a “man of honesty, dedication and commitment,” telephoned Thomas at 6:20 p.m. EDT immediately following the vote, which had begun only a few minutes after its scheduled 6 p.m. starting time.

“Congratulations, you did a fine job,” Bush told the newly confirmed associate justice. “You were a wonderful inspiration and you have the overwhelming support of the American people.” The President said that Thomas will be sworn in within a week or two.

Despite the joy among his supporters, Thomas now goes to the Supreme Court with the largest number of “no” votes ever--48. The previous record was held by William H. Rehnquist, whose 1986 elevation to the post of chief justice was approved by a 67-33 vote. In 1971, Rehnquist was confirmed as an associate justice by a vote of 68 to 26.

The only Supreme Court justice confirmed by a narrower margin than Thomas was Stanley Mathews, who in 1881 won the Senate’s approval by a single vote, 24 to 23.

In this century, the two narrowest victory margins involved justices who eventually became giants of the law. In 1916, Louis D. Brandeis was approved by a 47-22 margin, while Charles Evans Hughes won confirmation as chief justice in 1930 on a 52-26 vote.

Several women’s groups, which had largely opposed the confirmation of Thomas, warned that those senators who voted to confirm Thomas on Tuesday will face the wrath of female voters at the polls.

“It is obvious that Clarence Thomas is hostile to women’s rights and indifferent to the realities of women’s lives. Despite the Judiciary Committee’s attempted cover-up and lopsided hearings, Thomas faces serious, credible, corroborated charges of sexual harassment,” said National Organization for Women Vice President Patricia Ireland. “We will build a new political force to challenge incumbents who have abandoned the dream of equality and to challenge the unresponsive and outdated political parties.”

Four Democratic senators who had either declared their support or were believed to have leaned heavily toward Thomas’ confirmation ultimately voted against him: Nevadans Richard H. Bryan and Harry Reid, West Virginia’s Robert C. Byrd and Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut. In total, 11 of 57 Senate Democrats and 41 of the Senate’s 43 Republicans voted for Thomas.

The Senate’s two female members, Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Kan.) and Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), split along partisan lines, although Kassebaum scolded both Thomas and her Senate colleagues for engaging in some of the most bruising clashes in recent political memory.

“I have no intention of being a party to ‘high-tech lynching,’ a phrase I flatly reject as having any validity here,” said Kassebaum, repeating a phrase Thomas himself had used in describing to the Judiciary Committee his contempt for their proceeding. “But I also have no intention of being a party to an intellectual witch-hunt against Prof. Hill,” she added.

California’s senators, Democrat Alan Cranston and Republican John Seymour, also split along partisan lines, with Cranston voting against Thomas.

In the end, the Bush Administration appeared to have assured its victory by acting to shore up the wavering support of Democrats who had endorsed Thomas before the vote was delayed. That strategy showed its effectiveness as the White House held on to the votes of such key Democrats as Sen. Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama and Sen. J. James Exon of Nebraska, who said Monday that he voted “without enthusiasm” to confirm Thomas.

In a day of intensive public and private lobbying, the White House and Thomas’ chief Senate backer, Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), also made appeals for fairness on Thomas’ behalf, arguing that as the accused, Thomas deserved the same protections as a defendant in a criminal case--the presumption of innocence unless guilt has been proved.

As senators lined up during Tuesday’s pre-vote debate to explain what may well be controversial votes at home, it was clear that the appeal to adopt criminal standards of proof in Thomas’ case worked.

“The burden of proof has to be on the person who is making the accusation. That’s our system,” said DeConcini on the Senate floor. “Granted that this is not a court of law. But you have to apply a fairness standard,” he added. “Any doubts have to be in favor of Judge Thomas.”

Indeed, the argument also helped the White House pick up another Democratic vote that proved key to Thomas’ confirmation. Sen. Charles S. Robb of Virginia, who remained undecided until Tuesday, announced that, while Hill’s testimony had challenged his instinct to back Thomas, it had failed to convince him beyond doubt of Thomas’ guilt.

For some who face angry constituents at home, the “fundamental fairness” issue, as Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.) described it, may be a last line of defense.

“If the phone calls in my state are any indication, the popular vote for me would be to vote against Judge Thomas,” Cohen said. “The calls are running heavily against him. So the easy thing and the popular thing for me to do would be to vote no. History might show it to even be the right thing to do. But . . . I do not believe it’s the fair thing to do under these circumstances.”

Both winners and losers in the pitched battle acknowledged Tuesday that public regard for the Senate, which has been increasingly mired in scandal in recent years, has taken a dizzying dive and that its rehabilitation will be as difficult as it is necessary. But Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), whose reputation may have been seared by his chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, defended the panel’s handling of the explosive exchange of charge and countercharge.

“I know of no system of government where when you add the kerosene of sex, the heated flame of race and the incendiary nature of television lights, you’re not going to have an explosion,” Biden said. “I know of no institution that has been created by mankind that can contain that conflagration.”

But even as they handed the Bush Administration one of its most hard-fought victories, several lawmakers scored the White House for its handling of the nomination. Freshman Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.), who voted to confirm Thomas, chided the White House for “politicizing” the nation’s highest court.

Senators from both parties, including several who voted to confirm Thomas, angrily denied charges lodged by Thomas that racism was involved in the allegations leveled against him and the Senate’s investigation of them.

Last Friday, Thomas, in a barely controlled rage, had called the proceedings a “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.” His emotionally charged remarks rocked the hearings and put many Democratic lawmakers and opponents of his nomination on the defensive.

Sen. Byrd denounced Thomas’ explosive remarks as “an attempt to fire the prejudices of race hatred (and) shift it to a matter involving race.”

“I, frankly, was offended by his injection of racism into these hearings,” said Byrd in one of the day’s most impassioned dissents. “It was a diversionary tactic intended to divert both the committee’s and the American public’s attention away from the issue at hand, the issue being which one is telling the truth. . . . He tried to shift the ground, and I thought it was blatant intimidation. And, unfortunately, it worked.”

Byrd also accused Thomas of “arrogance” and “stonewalling” for failing to listen to Hill’s testimony.

But while senators lashed out at Thomas and each other, the upper chamber’s 98 male members also made clear that Hill’s allegations and her treatment at the hands of the Judiciary Committee, had prompted some soul-searching about relationships between men and women in and out of the workplace.

For the Senate, which has largely exempted itself from federal employment guidelines and where sexual harassment is alleged to be rampant, such a review, conceded several senators, is long overdue.

“Overnight, as on perhaps no other issue in our history, the entire country made a giant leap of understanding about sexual harassment, that offensive conduct will never be treated lightly again” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said.

But, Kennedy added: “The Senate today is not passing judgment solely on Judge Thomas or Prof. Hill. The Senate is making a fundamental statement about our values and our conscience. Make no mistake about it. We in the Senate are also passing judgment on ourselves. Are we an old boys’ club, insensitive at best and perhaps something worse?”

The ordeal of confirmation, added several lawmakers both for and against Thomas, may also improve the character of the judge who will now be called “Mr. Justice.”

According to Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), the ordeal “will make Clarence Thomas an even better, stronger judge. He has withstood the test. He’s a stronger person because of it.”

Others saw Thomas’ experience as a spur for change, not just improvement, in his approach to the Supreme Court’s work.

“He used his race in a way that he had always refused to do,” said Sen. Bill Bradley (J.). “He identified with the shared experiences of black suffering and black indignities at the hands of whites. He became stronger and more vulnerable when his life and reputation were on the line.”

As Thomas moves to the Supreme Court, which began its new term Oct. 7, he will leave questions, such as those firmly in the political sphere. And once Thomas is sworn in to his new position, the Bush Administration has made clear, it will press the Senate to examine both itself and the confirmation process, which Judge Robert H. Bork--who was rejected for the Supreme Court by the Senate in 1987--called “a Roman circus with two human sacrifices.”