William Rehnquist - Associate Justice

Associate Justice

Nixon nominated Rehnquist to replace John Marshall Harlan II on the Supreme Court upon Harlan's retirement, and after being confirmed by the Senate by a 68–26 vote on December 10, 1971, Rehnquist took his seat as an Associate Justice on January 7, 1972. There were two vacancies on the court at the time; Nixon nominated Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr. to fill the other, left by the retirement of Hugo Black. Black died September 25, 1971, and Harlan died on December 29 of that year.

On the Burger Court, Rehnquist promptly established himself as the most conservative of Nixon's appointees, taking a narrow view of the Fourteenth Amendment and a broad view of state power. Rehnquist almost always voted "with the prosecution in criminal cases, with business in antitrust cases, with employers in labor cases, and with the government in speech cases". Although Rehnquist was often a lone dissenter in cases early on, his views would later often become the majority view of the Court.

Professor David Shapiro of Harvard Law School suggested that Rehnquist's votes were guided by three basic propositions:

1. Conflicts between an individual and the government should, whenever possible, be resolved against the individual (this also holds for conflicts between an individual and an employer, including civil rights litigation).
2. Conflicts between state and federal authority should, whenever possible, be resolved in favor of the states.
3. Questions of the exercise of federal jurisdiction should, whenever possible, be resolved against such exercise.