WHEN GEORGE BUSH BEGAN POUNDING Michael Dukakis this summer for his 1977 veto of legislation requiring Massachusetts teachers to lead students in the Pledge of Allegiance, the conservative hardliners at The Walt Street Journal’s editorial page watched with satisfaction. When Dukakis issued a belated and legalistic response, they pounced.

The honors were done by L. Gordon Crovitz, a mildspoken law graduate of both Oxford (on a Rhodes Scholarship) and Yale of alternately brooding and cherubic appearance, who has become at the age of 30 the voice of the editorial page on legal issues ranging from the Irancontra affair to the parol evidence rule. He has also become the most conspicuous polemicist for the hardedged neoconservative approach to law that has fueled the growth of the Federalist Society in law schools and Washington power circles; President Ronald Reagan quoted him by name on December 13. He is an articulate and vitriolic scourge of liberals, "judicial activists," Congress, "vigilante" special prosecutors, plaintiffs lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and others. His causes include a quasimonarchical vision of presidential power, getting the judiciary out of the constables’ hair and into the deregulation of business, and turning back the clock of the common Jaw about 30 years.