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The Rehnquist Legacy.

Article Excerpt
The Rehnquist Legacy

Craig Bradley, editor Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org 392 pp., $80 cloth, $35.99 paper

When President Nixon nominated William Rehnquist and Lewis Powell to the Supreme Court in 1971, the Senate confirmed Powell, a 64-year-old former president of the American Bar Association, in a vote of 89-1. But Rehnquist, a 47-year-old dyed-in-the-wool conservative, was controversial.

He had been active in Republican politics, opposed antidiscrimination laws in Arizona, written speeches for Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign, and persuaded Goldwater to claim that President Kennedy violated the Constitution when he dispatched troops to enforce desegregation orders in Mississippi. And when Rehnquist clerked for Justice Robert Jackson, he had written a memorandum defending the "separate but equal" doctrine. After bumpy hearings, the Senate confirmed Rehnquist by a vote of 68-26.

When President Reagan nominated him as chief justice 14 years later, Rehnquist was just as respected for his intelligence and legal skills--and just as controversial--as he had been in 1971. Throughout his career, he was plagued with questions about whether he was a closet bigot. At the Senate hearings, Rehnquist faced questions about buying homes with restrictive covenants against nonwhites and Jews. He testified that he...

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