William Rehnquist was a Supreme Court justice, appointed by President Nixon and elevated to Chief Justice by President Reagan. Although not everyone agrees with the conservative ideas he pushed, Rehnquist is widely regarded as one of the most successful justices to ever have served on the Supreme Court.
Rehnquist received his education from Stanford and Harvard, receiving masters’ in Political Science and Government. Graduating at the top of his class and impressing his professors, Rehnquist was hired to be a clerk for a justice on the Supreme Court, Robert Jackson. During his time working as a clerk, he wrote a memo which became controversial and which he was questioned about later in his career, where he stated that the decision of “separate but equal” from Plessy v. Ferguson should have been affirmed in Brown v. Board of Education. Rehnquist later said that this was intended to reflect Justice Jackson’s views and was not a view that he himself held.
After impressing Nixon, Rehnquist was appointed to the court in 1971 with a 68-26 vote, even though he was a strongly conservative justice and Congress was dominated by democrats. For the next decade and a half, Rehnquist followed through on his conservative ideals, fighting against abortion and affirmative action and in favor of school prayer and capital punishment, among other decisions. He earned the nicknames the “Lone Ranger” and “Lone Dissenter” for his disagreements with the other justices, which resulted in 52 solitary dissents.
In 1986, Rehnquist was appointed to be Chief Justice and in the following 3 years, Reagan was able to create a conservative majority through his other appointments. Rehnquist took advantage of this majority in some ways, such as when the Rehnquist court ruled that the federal government had no right to make schools a gun free zone because that was the right of the individual states, in United States v. Lopez. However, the court didn’t go as far as many would have thought, choosing not to overrule Roe v. Wade and Miranda v. Arizona, cases hated by many conservatives. Rehnquist continued serving as chief justice until he died of thyroid cancer on September 3, 2005. In his 33 years on the Court, he left a significant mark on the legal system as we know it today.
https://www.oyez.org/justices/william_h_rehnquist
https://www.biography.com/people/william-rehnquist-9454479
Great post Shawn, it gives a really clear and informative rundown of Justice Rehnquist's judicial career. Unlike his more liberal colleagues, Rehnquist was a believer in strict constructionism, meaning that he interpreted the Constitution literally and did not believe that it was "fluid". This belief was a stark contrast to those held by previous justices earlier in the century, many of whom created many new laws and rights under the belief that they could do so because the Constitution does not explicitly bar them from doing so. Despite the many cases in which he was the sole dissenter, Rehnquist is widely recognized as one of the most successful Supreme Court justices.
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https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Rehnquist
Rehnquist was interesting as a political figure. While liberals just lumped him with the other conservatives, the conservatives never really accepted him as one of their own (hence all his standalone decisions). Furthermore, many liberals failed to notice how often he abandoned conservative ideals, like supporting the Miranda laws, and conservatives never appreciated his effective tactics in convincing others of his opinions (Scalia, in contrast, simply stubbornly supported pretty much all conservative measures). He was considered so successful because he walked the middle line and never fell off.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/04/rehnquist-the-great/303820/
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