The Supreme Court's loss

I've been reading Robert C. Byrd: Child Of The Appalachian Coalfields. Previously unknown to me were the facts that Byrd put himself through law school while he was in Congress, and that his was one of six names that President Nixon tendered to the ABA before the "surprise" nominations of Powell and Rehnquist in 1971.

That sounds like some kind of a Nixonian joke to me, but Byrd quotes Nixon as telling him years later: "The Supreme Court's loss was the Senate's gain."