February 7, 1983

Chief Justice Warren E. Burger today asked Congress to create a court with judges temporarily borrowed from other Federal courts as an experiment in easing the Supreme Court's workload. The new panel would decide issues on which any two of the 13 United States Courts of Appeals reached conflicting decisions, eliminating the need for the Supreme Court to resolve the conflicts. Conflicting decisions among the Federal appeals courts provide the single biggest source of cases that the Supreme Court decides every year. While the Court is not required to accept such cases, it feels obliged to do so in many cases to avoid different meanings in different parts of the country for a Federal law or a constitutional provision.

Corporate profits continued to deteriorate in the fourth quarter of 1982 as the recession aggravated normal cyclical declines in industries such as oil, steel, chemicals, autos and forest products. The deterioration continues a downward trend for corporate earnings since peaking in 1979. All of the results are not in yet - the auto companies and major retailers such as Sears, Roebuck & Company have yet to report - but the picture that is emerging is not good, although it could have been worse. ''Fourth quarter after-tax profits for the entire corporate sector are likely to be in the $116 billion range, a drop of more than 20 percent from year-earlier levels,'' said Donald Ratajczak, director of economic forecasting at Georgia State University.

China said today that the visit of Secretary of State George P. Shultz had clarified relations with the United States ''to some extent'' but that longstanding differences remained over Taiwan and other issues. A report by the New China News Agency, quoting unnamed Chinese ''informed sources,'' offered Peking's version of the talks only hours after Mr. Shultz departed this morning for South Korea. The official press agency reiterated virtually all of China's complaints about the United States, including its unhappiness with American support for Taiwan and with what were termed ''discriminatory and restrictive policies'' in Chinese-American trade. U.S. Mideast Policy Assailed Paraphrasing the remarks of Chinese officials at the talks with Mr. Shultz, the press agency said Washington and Peking held similar views on the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia and arms control. But it said China held the United States responsible for Israel's ''aggression and expansion'' in the Middle East and was critical of American support for South Africa's policy toward South-West Africa.

State universities across the country are raising admission requirements and many state education agencies are stiffening standards for high school diplomas to emphasize stronger preparation for college. The trend, mainly affecting high school students headed for college, reverses more than a decade of loosened standards. It is expected to make it harder for students without proper academic background to get into some state universities, many of which are shifting away from open admission policies. The movement is a reaction to widespread public dissatisfaction with the general achievement levels of high school graduates. Many educators say the graduates are not ready for either college or jobs.

Prof. Homer H. Clarke Jr. of the University of Colorado Law School recently set out to revise his textbook, ''Domestic Relations in the United States,'' only to find that he had to rewrite it. ''In the 15 years since that book came out, very little of family law remains unchanged,'' he said. ''There's been a complete revolution.'' A similar problem confronted Prof. Harry D. Krause of the University of Illinois Law School, when he decided to update his study guides in family law, published in 1976. ''After only seven years,'' he said, ''I'm throwing out practically everything. It's not a revision, it's almost a complete redo.''