RIP: William Hubbs Rehnquist, 1924-2005

Last night Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist died from cancer. One of the giants of American jurisprudence during my lifetime and the life of the nation, he will be remembered by history as one of the great justices of the United States Supreme Court, fully deserving of a place on a roll call that includes William Brennan, Louis Brandeis, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Charles Evans Hughes, Hugo Black and Earl Warren on the list of most influential justices of the 20th Century.

Rehnquist succeeded John M. Harlan III, a justice with great intellectual integrity. What Nixon's appointment netted for the Court and the country was another jurist who would balance the Court from its far-leftward tilt of the mid-late 1960s.

Rehnquist's career on the Court can be divided into his two offices: Associate Justice from 1972-1986 and Chief Justice from 1986-2005. As an associate justice, Rehnquist was Scalia-with-a-smile -- a sharp conservative who believed in the exceptionalism of the American Constitution, the limits it placed on the states and the Congress, the need for both intellectual exactitude and restraint in the Court's decision-making process.

As Chief Justice, Rehnquist will be remembered for presiding over some of the most controversial cases in the nation's history: abortion rights (time and again), the Kelo and Roper decisions (where Rehnquist ended up in the minority but on the right side of the issue), the two flag-burning cases of 1989 and 1990 (where Rehnquist wrote stinging, albeit wrong [to the Monk], dissents) and the most political cases of the past 20 years: the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton and the 2000 proceedings in Bush v. Gore. During these years Justice Scalia (who Pres. Reagan nominated to Rehnquist's seat when Rehnquist received the Chief Justice nomination) carried the conservatives' intellectual standard on the Court. Chief Justice Rehnquist did advocate strongly for more resources for the Federal Courts. Unfortunately, he concurrently led a somewhat unprecedented diminution of the Supreme Court's docket to far less than 100 cases per year (something that his successor will hopefully rectify). Of the three Chief Justices directly elevated from an Associate Justice position, his was probably the smoothest-run and least-fractious court of the three (viz. Edward White's tenure or the bicker-a-thon under Harlan Fiske Stone) despite the vast differences in the various justices' jurisprudential outlooks -- a tribute to Rehnquist's personality.

Here is a short statement by the President upon hearing of the Chief Justice's death. It's understated but to the point. Somehow fitting for the man himself.

The Monk would like to see Pres. Bush nominate Rehnquist's replacement as soon as feasible and tasteful. My personal first choice (other than Emilio Garza) is J. Harvie Wilkinson III, whom I touted here and here.