Rehnquist, William H. (1924–) (Update 2)

AuthorEarl M. Maltz
Pages2159-2160

Page 2159

William Hobbes Rehnquist served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and later ascended to the position of CHIEF JUSTICE of the United States. Rehnquist was born in 1924 outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After initially attending Kenyon College and serving in the U.S. Army for three years during WORLD WAR II, he received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University in 1948. Prior to attending law school, Rehnquist then received an M.A. in political science from Stanford in 1949, followed by an M.A. in government from Harvard in 1950. In December, 1951, he was graduated first in his class from Stanford Law School. Rehnquist then served as a law clerk to Justice ROBERT H. JACKSON, thereafter entering private practice in Phoenix, Arizona. During his years in Phoenix, Rehnquist was an outspoken, politically active conservative, criticizing the WARREN COURT for "extreme solicitude for the claims of Communists and other criminal defendants" and at one point opposing OPEN HOUSING LAWS as an unjustifiable infringement on private PROPERTY RIGHTS. When RICHARD M. NIXON was elected President, he chose Rehnquist to head the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. In that position, Rehnquist often served as the administration's spokesman on controversial legal issues.

After the resignation of the second JOHN MARSHALL HARLAN and HUGO L. BLACK in 1971, Nixon nominated Rehnquist and LEWIS F. POWELL to serve as Associate Justices. Rehnquist's nomination was by far the more controversial of the two; indeed, it set off a bitter struggle over confirmation in the U.S. SENATE. No one questioned Rehnquist's intellectual capacity; however, Senate liberals were disturbed by his record on CIVIL RIGHTS. In particular, they focused on two points. The first was a memorandum that Rehnquist had written for Justice Jackson in connection with BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION (1954) which argued that PLESSY V. FERGUSON (1896) "was right and should be reaffirmed." The second was Rehnquist's participation in a Republican poll-watching project that challenged voting credentials in predominantly African American and Hispanic neighborhoods in Phoenix. Rehnquist responded that Jackson himself had requested a defense of Plessy, and that he had engaged in no wrongdoing during the poll-watching project. Ultimately, Rehnquist was confirmed on a 68?26 vote.

In personal terms, Rehnquist soon became known on the Court for his friendliness, informality, and irreverent sense of humor. From a jurisprudential...

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