This book is a legal biography of William Rehnquist of the U. S. Supreme Court.

This book explores the pivotal career and judicial legacy of William Rehnquist (1924-2005). With the political polarization and controversial cases swirling around the Supreme Court in recent years, understanding the development of Rehnquist is critical to anyone seeking to learn about modern judicial conservatism and its origins. While the last several years have marked perhaps the height of judicial conservatism, the movement’s origins lie with William Rehnquist. “This fascinating book by a remarkably talented young scholar provides an illuminating and engaging history of Justice Rehnquist’s entire intellectual life. A scholarly work but also an entertaining read, the book is a unique biography of William Rehnquist as well as a concise history of the Supreme Court during his time.” - Theodore W. Ruger John H. Chestnut Professor of Law and Former Dean, University of Pennsylvania Law School

In 1986, the Supreme Court's leading conservative, William H. Rehnquist, labeled by Newsweek as "The Court's Mr. Right," was made Chief Justice. Almost immediately, legal scholars, practitioners, and pundits began questioning what his influence would be, and whether he would remake our constitutional corpus in his own image. Would the center hold, or fold? This collected volume, edited by Martin H. Belsky, is the third in a series which includes The Warren Court and The Burger Court, both edited by Bernard Schwartz. It gathers together a distinguished group of scholars, journalists, judges, and practitioners to reflect on the fifteen-year impact of the Rehnquist Court. The work provides an overview of the Rehnquist Court's influence to date, examines in detail the seminal issues confronted by the Court, and places the Court in broad historical perspective. Subjects discussed include First Amendment rights and cyberspace, criminal justice reform, the Court's pattern of constitutional interpretation, the international impact of the Rehnquist Court, and the Supreme Court's increasing interaction with state constitutional law. A comprehensive look at the significant shifts in constitutional jurisprudence under Rehnquist's leadership, this volume illustrates how the Rehnquist Court has brought us almost full-circle from the judge-made revolution of the Warren Court. A must-have for all students of the Court and legal history, this book contains fascinating insights into one of the century's most controversial courts and a legacy still in the making.

This book examines the criminal justice decisions of the Rehnquist Court era through analyses of individual justices' contributions to the development of law and policy. The Rehnquist Court era (1986-2005) produced a period of opportunity for the U.S. Supreme Court's judicial conservatives to reshape constitutional law concerning rights in the criminal justice process. It was an era in which the Court produced many hotly-debated decisions concerning such issues as capital punishment, search and seizure, police interrogations, and prisoners' rights. The Court's most conservative justice, William H. Rehnquist, ascended to the key leadership position of Chief Justice and he was joined on the Court by two new appointees, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, who were equally supportive of both greater authority for police and limited definitions of constitutional rights for suspects, defendants, and criminal offenders. The Rehnquist Court era decisions refined and narrowed many of the rights-expanding decisions of the Warren Court era (1953-1969). However, the Supreme Court did not ultimately eliminate the Warren era's foundational rights concepts in criminal justice, such as the exclusionary rule and Miranda warnings. As the leading liberal voices of the Warren era, William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, retired early in the Rehnquist era, the Court experienced continued advocacy of broad conceptions for many rights through the increased assertiveness of Republican appointees Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, and David Souter as well as the arrival of new Democratic appointees Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. In many important cases, the justices advocating the preservation of constitutional protections could prevail, even on a generally conservative Court, by persuading one or more of President Ronald Reagan's appointees to support a particular right for suspects and defendants. Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, in particular, shaped outcomes within a divided Court as they determined which of the Court’s wings with which they would align in a particular case. The contributors to this volume identify and highlight the unique perspectives and influential decisions of individual justices as the means for understanding the Rehnquist Court’s imprint on criminal justice.

In this revised third edition of a classic in American jurisprudence, G. Edward White updates his series of portraits of the most famous appellate judges in American history from John Marshall to Oliver W. Holmes to Warren E. Burger, with a new chapter on the Rehnquist Court. White traces the development of the American judicial tradition through biographical sketches of the careers and contributions of these renowned judges. In this updated edition, he argues that the Rehnquist Court's approach to constitutional interpretation may have ushered in a new stage in the American judicial tradition. The update also includes a new preface and revised bibliographic note.

Constitutional scholars Christopher P. Banks and John C. Blakeman offer the most current and the first book-length study of the U.S. Supreme Court’s “new federalism” begun by the Rehnquist Court and now flourishing under Chief Justice John Roberts. Using descriptive and empirical methods in political science and legal scholarship, and informed by diverse approaches to judicial ideology, from historical to new institutionalist, they investigate how the U.S. Supreme Court rulings have shaped the political principle of federalism. While the Rehnquist Court reinvorgorated new federalism by protecting state sovereignty and set new constitutional limits on federal power, Banks and Blakeman show that in the Roberts Court new federalism continues to evolve in a docket increasingly attentive to statutory construction, preemption, and business litigation. In addition, they analyze areas of federalism not normally studied by scholars such as religious liberty and foreign affairs.

A provocative analysis of what "sovereignty" means to indigenous nations, challenging commonly held conceptions about the relationship between sovereignty and economic development.

As a young lawyer practicing in Arizona, far from the political center of the country, William Hubbs Rehnquist's iconoclasm made him a darling of Goldwater Republicans. He was brash and articulate. Although he was unquestionably ambitious and extraordinarily self-confident, his journey to Washington required a mixture of good-old-boy connections and rank good fortune. An outsider and often lone dissenter on his arrival, Rehnquist outlasted the liberal vestiges of the Warren Court and the collegiate conservatism of the Burger Court, until in 1986 he became the most overtly political conservative to sit as chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Over that time Rehnquist's thinking pointedly did not -- indeed, could not -- evolve. Dogma trumped leadership. So, despite his intellectual gifts, Rehnquist left no body of law or opinions that define his tenure as chief justice or even seem likely to endure. Instead, Rehnquist bestowed a different legacy: he made it respectable to be an expedient conservative on the Court. The Supreme Court now is as deeply divided politically as the executive and legislative branches of our government, and for this Rehnquist must receive the credit or the blame. His successor as chief justice, John Roberts, is his natural heir. Under Roberts, who clerked for Rehnquist, the Court remains unrecognizable as an agent of social balance. Gone are the majorities that expanded the Bill of Rights. The Rehnquist Court, which lasted almost twenty years, was molded in his image. In thirty-three years on the Supreme Court, from 1972 until his death in 2005 at age 80, Rehnquist was at the center of the Court's dramatic political transformation. He was a partisan, waging a quiet, constant battle to imbue the Court with a deep conservatism favoring government power over individual rights. The story of how and why Rehnquist rose to power is as compelling as it is improbable. Rehnquist left behind no memoir, and there has never been a substantial biography of him: Rehnquist was an uncooperative subject, and during his lifetime he made an effort to ensure that journalists would have scant material to work with. John A. Jenkins has produced the first full biography of Rehnquist, exploring the roots of his political and judicial convictions and showing how a brilliantly instinctive jurist, who began his career on the Court believing he would only ever be an isolated voice of right-wing objection, created the ethos of the modern Supreme Court.

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