WASHINGTON -- Democrats generally cheered, and Republicans groused, when a bipartisan group of senators crafted a compromise on judicial nominations last month. But with the Senate now confirming several conservative nominees whom Democrats had blocked for years, some liberals are questioning the wisdom of the deal, and fretting about what comes next.

Janice Rogers Brown

"Our problem with the compromise is the price that was paid," Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., said yesterday. She and other Congressional Black Caucus members plan to march into the Senate today to protest the impending confirmation of Janice Rogers Brown.

President Bush nominated Brown, an African American on the California Supreme Court, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, second in prestige and importance only to the Supreme Court.

Brown has expressed her vividly conservative philosophies in speeches and written opinions that dismay liberals. Her record "shows a deep hostility to civil rights, to workers' rights, to consumer protection and to a wide variety of governmental actions in many other areas," Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said in the first of two Senate floor speeches opposing her nomination yesterday.

The Senate voted 65 to 32 yesterday to end a nearly two-year Democratic filibuster of Brown. The vote stemmed from last month's deal in which seven Democrats agreed to drop filibusters of Brown and four other long-contested nominees, and to refrain from future judicial filibusters except in "extraordinary circumstances." In return, seven GOP senators agreed to scuttle a proposed rule change by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., that would have effectively banned all judicial filibusters.

Before the deal was reached, Democrats had used the filibuster delaying tactic-- which can be stopped only with 60 votes -- to block 10 of Bush's appellate court nominees. Republicans hold 55 of the Senate's 100 seats. Bush renominated seven of the 10 this year, and senators were headed toward a bitterly partisan showdown until the 14 negotiators announced their pact.

The deal cleared the way for five of the seven renominated jurists to be confirmed, probably this week. Controversy has largely faded for two: Richard Griffin and David McKeague, Michigan judges tapped for the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. But the other three -- Brown, Priscilla Owen of Texas and William H. Pryor Jr. of Alabama -- still draw sharp denunciations from liberal groups who say they are outside the political mainstream.

After a four-year impasse, the Senate last month confirmed Owen for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. A confirmation vote on Brown is scheduled for today, and Senate leaders said they expect approval late tomorrow of Pryor for the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta.

Several conservative commentators described the "Gang of 14" deal as a setback for Frist. The majority leader reinforced that notion with speeches describing his disappointment that two of the renominated judges -- William G. Myers III of Idaho and Henry Saad of Michigan -- appeared unlikely to be confirmed.

But others say several sharply conservative judges are now being seated, and it is far from clear that the "extraordinary circumstances" clause will enable Democrats to block future conservative nominees to the Supreme Court or elsewhere.

"It looks like, in some ways, Frist is seizing the initiative," said University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias. Moreover, he said, liberals may be deluded in thinking the bipartisan deal will thwart another contentious nominee -- Brett Kavanaugh, the White House staff secretary -- who is not named in the two-page agreement. Two years ago, Bush nominated Kavanaugh, who helped independent counsel Kenneth Starr pursue the Monica Lewinsky case against former President Bill Clinton, to the D.C. Circuit appeals court.

"I think it's wishful thinking by the Democrats that he won't move forward," Tobias said. Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said of Kavanaugh in an interview yesterday, "I intend to push him."