Name:
William Rehnquist
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Dates:
Born: October 1, 1924 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Died: September 3, 2005
Graduated from Stanford Law School: 1951
Law Clerk for Justice Robert H. Jackson: 1952, 1953
Associate Justice: 1972 - 1986
Chief Justice: 1986 - 2005
Biography:
William Rehnquist is one of the most conservative justices to sit on the Supreme Court in a long time. Even while still a law clerk for Justice Robert H. Jackson, he wrote a memorandum supporting the principle of legal racial segregation and supporting the separate but equal doctrine espoused in Plessy v. Ferguson.
While working as a lawyer in Phoenix, Arizona, Rehnquist was active in opposing accommodation laws which were supposed to make it easier for minorities to vote and he participated in challenging minority voters who appeared at polling places. While serving as assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Council under President Nixon, he supported the claims of executive authority to engage in wiretapping and surveillance without court orders or judicial oversight, no-knock entries by police, and even abolishing the exclusionary rule (which tosses aside illegally obtained evidence).
As a Supreme Court Justice, Rehnquist regularly defers to the legislative and executive branches of the government — as far as he is concerned, the role of the judiciary is to carry out the political wishes of the other branches rather than question them. In principle, so long as a rational reason for a law can exist (even if he has to make it up himself), then the law is valid. This is what is known as the “rational scrutiny” test; it is currently applied to economic issues but not matters of civil rights. Rehnquist would like to see it applied across the board to pretty much all legal questions that come before the courts — and in practice, nearly all laws survive the rational scrutiny test.
Rehnquist also defers to state governments over and against the power of the federal government — at least when it involves the support of some conservative political agenda. He has also argued against applying the Bill of Rights to the states, urging instead a return to earlier standards by which States were only expected to treat individuals with “fundamental fairness.”
Rehnquist’s writings and decisions as a Supreme Court Justice can be best explained as based upon a combination of the principles of legal positivism and state-centered federalism. As to the former, Rehnquist does not accept that judges should take into consideration any moral or ethical principles which might serve as the foundation for the law; rather, the law is itself the highest principle and is self-justifying. If a law seems immoral, that is simply too bad — judges must reach decision based upon whether or not the law conforms to set legal standards, not any standards of morality or fairness.
As to the latter, Rehnquist consistently finds in favor of state governments against the federal government and he consistently finds in favor of both against individuals. For Rehnquist, the American political system is set up to dilute the power of a centralized government through multiple state jurisdictions, but not by granting too much power to individuals.
Unlike other conservatives, Rehnquist is not an “originalist” — he does not regard the intentions of the framers and authors of the Constitution as the only valid basis for interpretation. This can be proven quite readily through comments made during oral arguments in a case challenging a 1998 law that added 20 years to existing copyrights. According to Rehnquist, “What the framers thought is not applicable to many of today’s commerce rules.”
