|
Chief Justice
William Rehnquist, who steered the high court through groundbreaking
legal and political disputes as well as guided it through a docket-full
of potentially pivotal and controversial cases in recent court
terms, died on Sept. 3, 2005 at his home in Arlington, Va. at
the age of 80 from thyroid cancer.
 Word
of the chief justice's battle with thyroid cancer came out soon
after he entered the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda,
Md., on Oct. 22, 2004, to undergo a tracheotomy. Cancer experts
said his treatment indicated he likely had the most serious form
of the disease, although neither Rehnquist nor his doctors revealed
details about the extent of his illness at the time.
Born Oct.
1, 1924, Rehnquist grew up in Shorewood, a wealthy Milwaukee suburb,
where his father William Benjamin was a wholesale paper salesman
and his mother Margery Peck Rehnquist, a housewife and civic activist
fluent in five languages, worked freelance as a translator for
local companies. Early on he embraced his family's respect for
such Republican Party leaders as Herbert Hoover and Robert Taft.
After graduating,
William Rehnquist entered Kenyon College but left after a year
to enter the Army Air Corps during World War II. He served as
a weather observer in the United States and North Africa from
1943 to 1946. After leaving the military, he transferred to Stanford
University using first his GI benefits and then later working
various part-time jobs. In 1948 he received a bachelor of arts
degree and a master's in political science. In 1950 he went to
Harvard University to obtain a master's in government. He went
back to Stanford and graduated first in his law school Class of
1952, ahead of Sandra Day O'Connor who came in third, and now
also serves on the court.
By this time
his conservative views were solidly established, and he became
adept at speaking about political issues of the day. He received
a prestigious 18-month clerkship with Associate Justice Robert
Jackson of the U.S. Supreme Court during the 1952-53 session.
During his tenure, he drafted a memo for Jackson that stated racial
segregation in education was "right and should be affirmed."
The memo later became an issue during his Senate confirmation
hearings in 1971, where he argued that he had drafted the document
to express the views of the justice and not his own.
In 1953, he
married Natalie Cornell, a fellow Stanford student. Following
the Supreme Court clerkship, Rehnquist returned to the West, settling
into a private practice in Phoenix. He stayed there from 1953
to 1969, working at several law firms. While in Phoenix, he was
active in the Republican Party and became friends with Richard
Kleindeist, who later became deputy attorney general in the Nixon
administration. With Kleindeist's help, Rehnquist returned to
Washington when President Nixon appointed him to serve as assistant
attorney general for the Office of Legal Affairs in the Department
of Justice.
Two years
later, in September 1971, U.S. Supreme Court Justices Marshall
Harlan and Hugo Black both suffering from terminal illnesses,
retired within one week of one another. President Nixon nominated
Rehnquist to fill the seat vacated by Harlan.
Rehnquist
served on the bench until 1986 when President Reagan nominated
him to replace retiring Chief Justice Warren Burger. Rehnquist
took that seat on Sept. 26, 1986, and Antonin Scalia took his
seat as associate justice.
Rehnquist
was easily the most conservative member of the court, and earned
a reputation for being a lone dissenter. He wrote several opinions
reversing the liberal trend of the Earl Warren court in criminal
cases. He was active in maintaining the boundary between federal
and state power. His belief that any move to weaken judicial independence
would only serve to undermine the effectiveness of the federal
courts was the cornerstone of his tenure at the court. In 1973,
when the high court in Roe v. Wade overturned state laws against
abortions, he dissented, arguing in favor of state power. He was
also opposed to affirmative action.
The active
conservatism of Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia
and Clarence Thomas was tempered in the 1990s by the emergence
of a judicially restrained bloc of justices including Sandra Day
O'Connor, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Liberals argued
that his unwavering support on such issues as states' rights served
to endorse blatant discrimination against minorities and women.
New York Times
reporter Stephen Engelberg has described Rehnquist as "a
conservative jurist whose polished opinions have won grudging
respect even from those who oppose his views."
In addition
to Roe v. Wade, Rehnquist participated in other pivotal rulings
including voting for a reinstatement of death penalty laws with
new procedures in 1976, dissenting in rulings upholding affirmative
action in public contracting in 1978, and in 1983, writing an
opinion allowing states to give parents a tax deduction for certain
education expenses, including those at religious schools. More
recently, Rehnquist presided over President Clinton's impeachment
trial, and the 2000 election recount trial which handed victory
to George W. Bush.
Rehnquist
proved an efficient administrator, significantly decreasing the
court's workload. Although he remained one of the most conservative
justices, he also maintained a strong sense of independence. He
had to endure charges that his opinions reflected his own personal
politics more than actual judicial philosophy. However, when examined,
it was noted that he often stood with the majority even if it
crossed the established Republican line.
As chief justice,
Rehnquist brought order to the court and won striking support
for judicial restraint from his colleagues.
Rehnquist
has written three books about the court and the American legal
system: "The Supreme Court: How It Is, How It Was,"
"Grand Inquests: The Historic Impeachments of Justice Samuel
Chase and President Andrew Johnson," and "All the Laws
But One: Civil Liberties in Wartime."
He married
Natalie Cornell in 1953. She died on Oct. 17, 1991 from ovarian
cancer. They had three children: James, Janet and Nancy.
-- Compiled for the Online NewsHour
by Wendy Mbekelu
|
