A LOOK AT POSSIBLE SUPREME COURT CANDIDATES : Ricardo H. Hinojosa

Conservative

U.S. district judge

When Ricardo H. Hinojosa was sworn in as a U.S. district judge in Texas eight years ago, he became, at 33, the youngest federal judge in the nation.

Now, at 41, he finds himself touted as a prospective Supreme Court nominee. Were he to gain the appointment, he would become the youngest justice by 10 years (Justice David H. Souter is 51.)

This is the second time in two years that Hinojosa has been mentioned as a possible high court appointee. Last summer, after Justice William J. Brennan retired, he was among the conservative judges said to have been recommended as a possible replacement.

Hinojosa is a protege of the late Republican Sen. John Tower of Texas and a veteran of GOP politics in and around Brownsville, Tex., his current home.

During his tenure on the bench, he has developed a reputation within legal circles as a hard-nosed, no-nonsense judicial conservative who rarely strays from a strict reading of the law.

An unusually unvarnished assessment of Hinojosa appeared earlier this year in the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary, a nationally distributed survey that profiles all U.S. judges based on statements by lawyers who appear before them.

Usually these profiles, based on unidentified sources, are relatively bland. But Hinojosa was the target of a number of critical comments.

After the almanac appeared, Daniel G. Covich, an Austin, Tex., lawyer who had several years earlier practiced in Hinojosa’s district, offered a spirited dissent in the Texas Lawyer magazine.

Covich said he “never once doubted Judge Hinojosa’s integrity, respect for the law and fairness. . . . Yes, there are more plaintiff-oriented judges; yes, I can probably hope for more liberal rulings in front of other judges. But never did I doubt (his) integrity, the fairness of his rulings and his following of precedent.”

Hinojosa received his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas and his law degree from Harvard. Before being named to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan, he was a partner in a law firm in McAllen, Tex.