Rehnquist William

American jurist and the 16th Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, a position he held from 1986 until his death on September 3, 2005. An imposing figure, Rehnquist presided over several important cases including the 1992 challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1999 impeachment trial of American President William Jefferson Clinton, and the controversial presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000. Despite his right-wing conservative background, Rehnquist was considered well qualified to preside over Clinton’s impeachment trial. A few years prior, Rehnquist had written a scholarly history on the 1868 impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson and he fully understood the seriousness of the proceedings. A man of great discretion professionally and personally, he did not openly discuss his opinion on the matter, though many believe that the issue caused him conflict. As Chief Justice, Rehnquist was known for encouraging his colleagues to be efficient in their work, keeping meetings on-time and on-subject, and writing sometimes short but to-the-point opinions. The son of a wholesale paper industry broker and a college educated mother who was fluent in several languages, Rehnquist was an intellectually precocious boy. "Bill got his smarts from his mom and his sense of humor from his dad," said a long-term friend. After high school, he entered college for a few months but left to enlist in the Army Air Corps. In 1946, on the G.I. bill, he went to Stanford University and graduated in 1948 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in political science. He earned a second master’s degree at Harvard University and then returned to Stanford for his law degree. He graduated first in his law class in 1952, with his future Supreme Court bench-mate Sandra Day O’Connor graduating third. For the next 18 months he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson where, through the cases that came up, Rehnquist’s conservative views were more fully formulated. In 1959, Rehnquist started private practice with a partner in Phoenix, Arizona, doing mostly real estate, wills and contracts, joking that "a fair amount of our time was devoted to counting cracks in the office ceiling." It was during this period that he became friendly with the state’s Republican leaders. A decade later he took a job as an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department. Three years after that, Richard Nixon nominated him to the Supreme Court despite the fact that he had never served as a judge. Rehnquist was 47 at the time of his swearing-in ceremony on January 7, 1972. In 1986 President Reagan named him Chief Justice, and Rehnquist assumed the mantle on September 26 that year. In his 33 years on the bench he saw a swing in political views and ideologies. When he joined the Bench as an Associate Justice in 1972, his was usually the sole conservative vote. With the ascension of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in 1991, Rehnquist found himself presiding over a working majority Though he adhered to his conservative agenda at the court, he showed little trepidation about bending tradition as he saw fit. An intellectual giant, his legal brilliance was well-respected and his remarkable memory was frequently demonstrated. For all the gravity that he brought to the office, the jurist was known behind-the-scenes for his informal manner and fun-loving ways. He was a serious poker player and enjoyed gambling, even wagering on Read less