Instant Expert Kit - William Rehnquist
Published 15 January 1999
As the Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton begins this week, William Hubbs Rehnquist has become only the second Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in American history to preside over such an event. The trial will run until the end of next week at least, and Washington-watchers will grow to know and love the gold-striped black gown of the Chief Justice and its brooding Swedish-American inhabitant. The stripes, as Andrew Stephen explains on page 24, are a personal addition by Rehnquist - an attempt to emulate the Lord Chancellor from Iolanthe.
A piece of self-expression by a wacky liberal, surely?
Not at all. This is the man who was described as a "philosopher-king" of Reaganism by the Washington Post while he scraped through to become head of the US judiciary in 1986. The controversy that dogged him then arose from his first appointment to the Supreme Court in 1971; remarkably, it involved accusations of perjury, the very crime for which Clinton was impeached. In a memo he wrote while a clerk for Justice Robert Jackson in 1952, he declared that racial segregation in education "was right and should be reaffirmed". Rehnquist later testified that these were Jackson's thoughts, not his own - but much evidence suggested otherwise. He was confirmed as Chief Justice in spite of this. Aside from a stint in North Africa during the second world war, the 74-year-old Rehnquist has risen quietly through the law from his midwestern Lutheran roots. Graduating top of his year at Stanford Law School, he worked with Justice Jackson and then became a trial lawyer in Arizona - a state in tune with his conservative instincts. His political activism during the 1960s - opposing parts of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and advising his friend Barry Goldwater - brought him into the Republican Party fold. While not known well to Richard Nixon (who called him "Renchburg"), he became head of the Office of Legal Counsel and helped to formulate the president's doctrine of executive privilege. Once appointed to the Supreme Court he was cast as the dissenting conservative in a liberal-dominated court - the role intended by Nixon, after all.
So he's a staunch partisan who'll give Clinton hell?
I haven't finished yet . . . After being confirmed as Chief Justice, he surprised many observers by making a number of more moderate rulings. To Reagan's displeasure, for example, he refused to overturn the Independent Counsel Law in 1988 (in so doing he laid the foundations for the Starr report). The other point is that it's difficult to guess his attitude, as this will only be his second full trial.
What?!
Coming to the Supreme Court direct from political office, he had never previously been a trial judge. His only other trial was a free-speech case in Virginia. The conservative Rehnquist sided with two suspended police officers who spoke out about the police brutality they had witnessed. More important with respect to the forthcoming Senate trial, Rehnquist, moving things along with his customary speed and efficiency, allowed a great deal of evidence to be presented. This is the big question of Clinton's trial: once the presentations from both sides are over on 23 January, will witnesses be called and further evidence sought? Rehnquist will want to be as thorough as possible, which could mean seeing Clinton or Lewinsky in the Senate. Misjudgements about his political position in the past are due to his keen sense of duty. As Chief Justice he felt obliged to be more consensual and less right wing, as that is what he believes the constitution demands. In the Senate trial he will want to demonstrate how seriously impeachment must be taken. His 1992 book on the subject, Grand Inquests, indicated how frustrated he might become with the Republicans. He considers impeachment necessary only for "flagrant abuses of power". He may yet feel some sympathy for Clinton.
And then there's that gown . . .
Ah, yes. In Iolanthe, the Lord Chancellor has one weakness - for his nubile young intern . . .
Duncan Parrish
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