Today in Supreme Court History: September 3, 2005

9/3/2005: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist dies.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist

 

Comments

[Martinned]

I guess that's one way to find out whether hell exists...

[Supremacy Claus]

Rehnquist dated O'Connor at Stanford Law School. Imagine if they had spawned, you would have some purebred, toxic dumbasses.

[caseorcontroversy]

Rest in peace to the man who did everything he could to stop the warren/brennan freight train and set the Court on the path to originalism.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Rehnquist was far from a strict originalist, akin to someone like Scalia or Thomas to the extent that term has much meaning.

[caseorcontroversy]

Not strict by thomas or scalia standards but relative to the norm back then, he was much more of an aberration than the former two.

[SRG2]

So at least one good thing happened on 3rd September.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Sure -- September 2nd came to an end.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

The original plan was for Judge John Roberts, a former clerk of Justice Rehnquist, a Reagan Justice Department official, and an experienced SCOTUS advocate, to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Then Rehnquist died, and Roberts took over that spot.

Rehnquist wrote multiple historical books, and one about the Supreme Court. Multiple speeches can also be found here:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/speeches/speeches.aspx

[David Nieporent]

And poor O'Connor, who wanted to retire, was forced [sic — obviously she could've quit if she wanted to] to hang on for months longer, until Alito was confirmed.

[Syd Henderson]

I've got his book on the history of the Supreme. It's a good read, particularly about the 19th Century.