Lincoln Chafee appears with U.S. District Judge William Smith when the two were on friendly terms in 2002.

AP / VICTORIA AROCHO

PROVIDENCE — In the rarefied, black-robed atmosphere of federal court it is uncommon for a judge to be locked in a rift with his political patron. But that is precisely what has happened between former U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee and U.S. District Judge William E. Smith, two men who once referred to each other as friends.

Last March, Chafee announced that he was recommending Robert Flanders, a well-known Providence lawyer and former Rhode Island Supreme Court justice, to the prestigious bench of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, New England’s most powerful federal court.

That did not sit well with Smith, who wanted the promotion to the appeals court for himself, Chafee said in a recent interview. In fact, Smith informed Flanders that he was “promised” the appointment, according to confidants of Flanders who spoke on the condition of anonymity, but Smith did not say where the promise came from.

Chafee said he believed that Smith, known universally as ‘Will’ to friends, who has been on the federal bench since 2002, is not as experienced as Flanders. “I just told him everything in due time and that Bob is the one I am recommending.”

Chafee said he was impressed with Flanders’ longer and more varied resumé, noting that Flanders had served as a Republican elected official (Barrington Town Council), in state government, in private practice and had already had eight years under his belt on an appellate court, the state Supreme Court.

It is the oldest of political axioms that a judge is a lawyer who is politically connected. In Smith’s case, the political patron was Chafee, the former senator and former Warwick mayor. Smith served as Warwick city solicitor when Chafee was mayor and staff director of Chafee’s Rhode Island Senate office during the senator’s successful 2000 election campaign. In 2002, Chafee sponsored Smith, then 42 — a labor lawyer who had never served as a judge or tried a case in federal court — for an opening on U.S. District Court in Providence.

Neither Smith nor Flanders would comment when contacted earlier this week.

Technically, federal judges and U.S. Attorneys are nominated by the president and are subject to Senate confirmation. But by tradition, the choices are heavily influenced by the senior senator of the president’s political party. In the case of Smith’s 2002 appointment, that was Republican Chafee.

At this point, Flanders’ chances of Senate confirmation appear remote; the Bush administration on Jan. 9 sent to the Senate more than 30 names of federal judges the president wants considered. Flanders was not among them.

Among the ironies in the Flanders nomination is that both of the state’s Democratic senators, Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, who defeated Chafee in November, support Flanders. Both said they have high regard for Flanders’ skills. “He’s a very capable guy,” said Whitehouse.

Neither Whitehouse nor Reed would comment on Smith. They both said they would only comment on candidates who have been publicly nominated.

In Providence’s cozy legal and political community, all the major players know each other — Reed, Whitehouse, Smith and Flanders all worked at one time or another at Edwards & Angell — the tony law firm that also once employed Chafee’s father, the late Sen. John H. Chafee.

The 1st Circuit, based in Boston, hears appeals from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico and Maine. Judgeships carry lifetime appointments and salaries, which are currently about $172,000 annually.

Making the political calculations fuzzier still is the Democratic takeover of the Senate. When Republicans controlled the Senate, the Bush administration often tried to put conservative judges on the appellate courts, regardless of the views of moderate senators, said Erwin Chemerinsky, a professor of law and political science at Duke University.

Now, with Democrats in control, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, has said the views of home-state senators will be honored to a greater degree.

Reed and Whitehouse both said the Bush administration must enter into negotiations and establish a vetting system for judicial candidates that lead to moderate consensus candidates that both parties can accept.

Whitehouse is a member of the Judiciary Committee, which considers all federal judge nominations. “We are working with the Bush administration to try to come up with a process for vetting judicial nominees.”

In the absence of a GOP senator, the tradition has been to ask the highest GOP officeholder — in this case Governor Carcieri — for a recommendation. Carcieri has backed Flanders.

The appeals court has a vacancy because Judge Bruce M. Selya, 72, the Rhode Islander who has sat on that bench for 21 years, has taken “senior status,” a form of semiretirement.

For his part, Reed says it is more important to fill the District Court vacancy in Providence — created by Judge Ernest Torres’ recent decision to assume senior status — than to confirm a new judge for the appeals court vacancy.

Chafee also confirmed that before he left office, he nominated U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente for the Torres opening. Chafee also said he sent the names of other lawyers, but would not say whom.

Chafee speculated that Smith, despite describing himself as a moderate, has ties to the Federalist Society, a group of legal conservatives, through his brother-in-law, Paul Cassell, a U.S. District judge in Utah, arguably the nation’s reddest state.

“The Federalist Society is a very conservative group that is very well-connected to the White House and the vice president [Dick Cheney] especially,” said Chafee.

Flanders, 57, was a Brown University football star running back. After college, he played minor-league baseball in the Detroit Tigers system, but couldn’t hit curve balls well enough to have a shot at a major-league career. So he buckled down at his studies at Harvard Law School and practiced law in Providence.

An Idaho native, Smith is a graduate of Georgetown University and its law school. He was an assistant town solicitor in West Warwick, a Municipal Court judge in West Warwick and a labor lawyer at Edwards & Angell.

As for Judge Selya, he believes that either Smith or Flanders would be well-qualified to sit on the appeals court. “I don’t have a dog in this hunt, but I think that Judge Smith and Bob Flanders are equally well-qualified. We would do well by either one.

“Both of these guys are good guys,” said Selya. “To have it turn into, as you say, a frittata, is too bad.”

smackay@projo.com