June 28, 1995

Seeking to give all Americans the protections embodied in a bill passed in Trenton, United States Senator Bill Bradley introduced a bill yesterday to insure minimum hospital stays for newborns and their mothers.

A new battle between the states is brewing on Capitol Hill, transcending the forces of partisanship and ideology. It is fueled by the most primal of forces: the desire of 50 intensely competitive states to get their fair share -- at the very least -- of the Federal pie. Republican leaders hoped to avoid it. But by seeking to replace some basic antipoverty programs with limited lump-sum payments to the states, they have started a formula fight, the most dreaded of legislative struggles.

NACH WAXMAN is a man of infinite patience. Consider the customer standing before him in Kitchen Arts and Letters, the only culinary bookstore in Manhattan. He's just back from San Francisco. "Chez Panisse was never singular," he sniffs. "And Square One has lost its point. It isn't singing, isn't resonating. The best was Silk's."

Lynne F. Stewart, counselor at law and radical at heart, strode through the Federal courthouse in Manhattan, a purple cloth tote bag crammed with legal papers dangling from her hand, a New York Mets cap on her head. No formidable briefcase like those being borne about her. No sign of the dress-for-success standard of lawyering also abundant in the vicinity.

The Government moved today to limit the power of law school professors to use the American Bar Association's accrediting process to increase salaries and fringe benefits and ease workloads at the nation's law schools. Under pressure from the Justice Department's antitrust division, the A.B.A. agreed to change the way it bestows approval on law schools, a cumbersome and costly process that critics say has helped drive up tuitions for the 174 institutions that now have A.B.A. sanction.