July 30, 1982

A study of appellate justice in New York has found that the state's highest court is too busy hearing relatively unimportant cases to perform its principal task of defining and clarifying the law. The study, which was requested by the court, cited ''a cluster of problems that pose a threat to the quality of judicial review.'' It recommended that the court, the State Court of Appeals, be given much greater discretion to select its own cases so that it could be free to address major constitutional issues and to reconcile conflicting lower-court rulings. The study also proposed a number of other changes in the state's overall appellate system, which it called ''possibly the most complex structure of appellate justice of any state in the nation.''

Predicting another year and a half of soft markets and huge financial losses, the International Harvester Company said today that it would ask its private lenders to suspend interest payments on debts of $1.6 billion until December 1983. Harvester's request comes as part of a far-reaching survival plan that the company said it would present to its nearly 200 bank lenders on Friday. The new blueprint, coming only seven months after the banks had agreed to refinance $4.2 billion in mostly short-term debt, projects a loss of about $1 billion in the company's 1982 fiscal year and includes plans for selling its construction business and closing several plants. The construction division accounts for roughly 10 percent of Harvester's more than $6 billion in annual revenue.

Yasir Arafat was out touring the Palestine Liberation Organization's front-line bunker recently when one of the fighters leaning behind a red dirt barricade asked him whether it was true that the P.L.O. was withdrawing from Beirut. ''What do you think?'' Mr. Arafat replied. ''I think that if you order us to withdraw I will shoot you with this gun,'' the guerrilla said. Guerrillas Are Not Optimistic Mr. Arafat chuckled. But the conversation summed up one of his big problems: how to negotiate a withdrawal of the P.L.O. from Lebanon that could be sold to his fighters as a victory.

A Company News report in Business Day yesterday gave an incorrect starting date for Pan American World Airways' mileage bonus program. It began yesterday.

The House tonight approved a $13.8 billion supplemental spending bill that probably set the stage for another Presidential veto. The bill, adopted by a vote of 282 to 111, provided only $362.6 million for military programs, $2.1 billion less than the Administration requested. In addition, the measure provided $5.2 billion for military pay. The House used most of the funds requested by President Reagan for military programs to bolster domestic spending programs, making a veto a possibility.