Wampum

Thursday was the 19th anniversary of nomination of William Rehnquist to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. There is much speculation about whether nor not this will be Rehnquist’s last term on the court. The AP reports:

William H. Rehnquist was tapped to be chief justice 19 years ago Friday, and while conventional wisdom says his combination of age and cancer won't allow him to stay around for a 20th, some court watchers are not so sure.

They point out that he looks better than he had been, is keeping a regular schedule and, maybe most important of all, still loves his work. All that adds up to the possibility - still slim - that he'll confound everyone and stay put, perhaps for another full term...

Many people who study the court still say the most likely scenario has Rehnquist stepping down, probably at the very end of the term...

But with Rehnquist back working full-time at the court and even making social engagements, some are scaling back their predictions. Several people with close ties to Rehnquist and other justices say privately that they aren't sure what he'll do.

The anniversary of his nomination as Chief is an appropriate time to remember a bit about Rehnquist’s career before became a Supreme Court Justice.

In the mid-1950’s, William Rehnquist was a law clerk for Justice Robert Jackson. The civil rights cases including Brown vs. Board of Education were before the Court.

To hold segregation of the public schools unconstitutional, the Court would have to overturn the precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson. Plessy was the post civil war case that had enabled the Jim Crow laws by holding the doctrine of “separate but equal” to be constitutional.

As the law clerk for Justice Jackson, Rehnquist wrote a legal memorandum about the upcoming case. In that memorandum, entitled A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases, Rehnquist wrote:

I realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position for which I have been excoriated by ‘liberal’ colleagues, but I think Plessy v Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed.

Rehnquist also wrote that:

it’s about time the Supreme Court faced the fact that the white people of the South don’t like the colored people.

After clerking for Justice Jackson, Mr. Rehnquist moved to Arizona. While in Arizona, he participated in “Operation Eagle Eye” for the Republican Party. A newspaper column described Mr. Rehnquist’s activities:

Lito Pena is sure of his memory. Thirty-six years ago he, then a Democratic Party poll watcher, got into a shoving match with a Republican who had spent the opening hours of the 1964 election doing his damnedest to keep people from voting in south Phoenix.

"He was holding up minority voters because he knew they were going to vote Democratic," said Pena.

The guy called himself Bill. He knew the law and applied it with the precision of a swordsman. He sat at the table at the Bethune School, a polling place brimming with black citizens, and quizzed voters ad nauseam about where they were from, how they'd lived there -- every question in the book. A passage of the Constitution was read and people who spoke broken English were ordered to interpret it to prove they had the language skills to vote.

By the time Pena arrived at Bethune, he said, the line to vote was four abreast and a block long. People were giving up and going home.

Pena told the guy to leave. They got into an argument. Shoving followed...

Pena went on to serve 30 years in the Arizona State Legislature…. The guy Pena remembers tossing out of Bethune School prospered, too. Bill Rehnquist, now better known as William H. Rehnquist, chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States…

Apparently, writing pro-segregation legal memoranda and suppressing the right to vote was a ticket to higher office. Bill Rehnquist became an Assistant Attorney General in the Nixon White House Counsel’s office. While there, according to Sean Wilentz, writing in The American Prospect, he “proposed a constitutional amendment designed to limit and disrupt implementation of the Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision of 1954.”

Mr. Nixon had the opportunity to appoint a number of Supreme Court Justices. Nixon was adamant that he wanted “strict constructionist” judges. What exactly was a strict constructionist? Mr. Rehnquist wrote a memo to Attorney General John Mitchell in which Rehnquist said that:

A judge who is a 'strict constructionist' in constitutional matters will generally not be favorably inclined toward claims of either criminal defendants or civil rights plaintiffs.

I do not know if Rehnquist wants or will be able to remain on the court. While I do not wish him poor health, I will not be sorry to see him go.