For four years, patronage has been all but dead in Chicago. So it came as a surprise to many when the federal appeals court in August suddenly brought it — at least, some of it — back to life.

U.S. District Judge Nicholas J. Bua had ruled in 1979 that government agencies couldn't turn down job applicants because of their political affiliation. After much haggling by attorneys on how the ruling should be implemented, Bua issued an order in 1983, and the city of Chicago then agreed to put most of its jobs into the civil service system. So did the Chicago Park District and the Cook County sheriff and treasurer. But the county board and the county clerk and assessor took the issue to the U.S. Court of Appeals, challenging not only Bua's ruling but the right of the plaintiffs to have filed the suit in the first place. And it was on that latter point that the appellate court came down with its decision.

(Since the city didn't appeal, the ruling doesn't apply to the city.)

Jobs, of course, are an important element in politics. If you help me get elected, I'll give you a job. If I don't get reelected, you're out. Not to mention your uncles, aunts and cousins. That's what made the Daley machine so impenetrable.

Then a 27-year-old liberal lawyer named Michael L. Shakman came along. He was a candidate to become a delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1969, and he filed a suit challenging the constitutionality of patronage on the grounds that it gave incumbents an unfair advantage in elections.

U.S. District Judge Abraham L. Marovitz, a friend of Mayor Richard J. Daley, tossed the suit out. But Shakman appealed, and the Court of Appeals ordered that the case be heard. Two years later, the city and county governments agreed out of court to stop firing people over politics. It became known as the Shakman Decree.

The firing issue was relatively easy. It's pretty basic that once people are hired by a governmental body, they can't be fired except for good cause. The courts said that the fact that they're at odds politically with the mayor isn't good cause. Shakman's suit, however, sought not only to prevent firings but to take the politics out of hiring. With the exception of policymaking jobs, Shakman contended that the mayor ought to hire people on the basis of merit — even people who were his political enemies.

Daley resisted that vigorously, and it was not until three years after his death that Judge Bua finally declared political hiring unconstitutional. Now the appeals court has reversed him — but without ever getting to the central issue of constitutionality. The court says simply — actually, not very simply — that, in effect, Judge Marovitz was right in dismissing the suit to begin with (at least, that portion dealing with hiring). That is because Shakman and his co-plaintiff, Paul M. Lurie, a supporter or his 1969 candidacy, didn't have "standing" to raise this issue. The court relies on an opinion written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor of the Supreme Court in 1984 requiring that plaintiffs, in order to have standing to sue, "allege personal injury fairly traceable to the defendant's allegedly unlawful conduct and likely to be redressed by the requested relief."

In layman's terms, that means that the suit must establish that (1) the plaintiff suffered an injury (here, losing an election); (2) the defendant did something unlawful (hired employees on the basis of politics: Judge Bua says that is unlawful); (3) the defendant's conduct was a cause of the plaintiff's injury (the patronage practice was a factor in Shakman's defeat); and (4) the plaintiff's situation will be improved if the court does what he asks (if the city and county are required to stop practicing patronage, Shakman will have a better chance of winning a future election).

The court found that the "line of causation" between the practice of patronage and Shakman's defeat was "particularly attenuated." The court conceded that some incumbents can use patronage to their advantage. "However," the court said, "in other political environments, incumbency may well be a ball and chain on the leg of the candidate, and the announcement of such a patronage policy may, far from being an advantage, seal his political doom.''

Some commentators applauded the decision on the grounds that courts shouldn't be meddling in these matters. Their argument is that if the voters don't want their government to practice patronage, they'll say so — and that it's a matter for the legislative branch to deal with, not the judicial branch. That may be what the civics books say, but in Chicago — at least, in 1969 in Chicago it was laughable: that if the people didn't like patronage, all they had to do was tell Mayor Daley and he would have been happy to abolish it!

The Court of Appeals decision was made by a three-judge panel of the court, and Shakman now has asked for a rehearing before the full court. But whether he gets it or not, his accomplishment has been substantial. His suit resulted in the demise of political firing, and it brought an end to political hiring in the city, if not in the county

By the way, that young lawyer who filed the suit is now 45. It has taken the courts 18 years to decide that he didn't have standing to sue. It kind of makes one wonder about the efficacy of our system of resolving legal disputes.