William Rehnquist - Analysis of Tenure As Chief Justice

Analysis of Tenure As Chief Justice

Professor Charles Fried has described the Rehnquist Court's "project" as being "to reverse not the course of history but the course of constitutional doctrine's abdication to politics." According to legal reporter Jan Crawford Greenburg, the Rehnquist Court's conservatives failed to dig up the foundation cemented by the more left-leaning justices and lower courts. However, in 2005 law professor John Yoo wrote: "It is telling to see how many of Rehnquist's views, considered outside the mainstream at the time by professors and commentators, the court has now adopted." Greenburg says conservative critics noted that the Rehnquist court did little to overturn the left's successes in the lower courts, and in many cases actively furthered them. Rehnquist was unable to build consensus and forge coalitions on key cases, and in his later years often came to care more about case outcomes than legal reasoning, disappointing Justice Scalia. More often than not, on volatile social issues, the Court did not take the conservative path.

A 2012 biography by journalist John A. Jenkins concludes, based on an analysis of Rehnquist's papers, that "Rehnquist’s judicial philosophy was nihilistic at its core, disrespectful of precedent, and dismissive of ... institutions that did not comport with his black-and-white view of the world."