William Rehnquist was born in Milwaukee in 1924, served in the Army Air Forces in World War II, and finished first in his Stanford Law School class, where he clerked for Justice Robert Jackson (§82). He built a law practice in Phoenix, grew active in conservative Republican politics, and led the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel under Nixon, who named him an Associate Justice in 1972. So often did he dissent alone in his early years that his clerks gave him a Lone Ranger doll.
Rehnquist spent thirty-three years on the Court, the last nineteen as Chief Justice after Ronald Reagan elevated him in 1986, and did more than any single figure to turn the conservative legal movement from dissent into doctrine. He led a federalism revival that, in United States v. Lopez, imposed the first limit on Congress's commerce power since the New Deal, and he reshaped criminal procedure and church-state law. Yet he could surprise: in Dickerson v. United States he wrote to uphold the Miranda warnings he had long criticized, because they had 'become part of our national culture.' A genial and supremely efficient administrator, he presided over the impeachment trial of President Clinton and over Bush v. Gore. He died in office in 2005.
United States v. Lopez
1995 · 5–4Holding · Congress exceeded its commerce power in banning guns near schools; the Commerce Clause has judicially enforceable limits.
Role · Rehnquist wrote for the Court.
The first decision since 1937 to strike a federal statute as beyond the commerce power — the keystone of the modern federalism revival.
Read the opinion →Dickerson v. United States
2000 · 7–2Holding · Miranda v. Arizona is a constitutional rule that Congress cannot legislatively overrule.
Role · Rehnquist, a longtime Miranda skeptic, wrote for the Court.
A striking instance of institutional stewardship overriding a Chief Justice's own doctrinal instincts.
Read the opinion →Washington v. Glucksberg
1997 · 9–0Holding · There is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide; substantive due process protects only rights deeply rooted in the nation's history and tradition.
Role · Rehnquist wrote for the Court.
A landmark limiting the expansion of unenumerated rights, central to modern due-process debates including Dobbs (§110).
Read the opinion →William Rehnquist spent thirty-three years on the Supreme Court — the last nineteen as Chief Justice — and did more than anyone to turn the conservative legal movement from dissent into doctrine. He arrived in 1972 as a Nixon appointee so far to the right that he dissented alone often enough to be nicknamed the 'Lone Ranger'; he left in 2005, having built majorities that revived federalism, narrowed the reach of Congress, and reshaped criminal procedure and church-state law. In United States v. Lopez he wrote the first decision since the New Deal to strike down a federal statute as exceeding the commerce power; he presided over the impeachment trial of President Clinton and over Bush v. Gore; and, to the surprise of many, he wrote Dickerson v. United States upholding Miranda. The fullest biography, John Jenkins's The Partisan, is pointedly critical and no admirer's portrait — there is still no definitive sympathetic life — so read it alongside the opinions and the scholarship. Begin with Jenkins for the life, then read Lopez to see the federalism revolution he led.
The Bookshelf
The fullest single-volume life, and the natural starting point — but a critical one, and readers should know it. Jenkins, a longtime legal journalist who interviewed Rehnquist, portrays a brilliant, affable, and deeply ideological man who bent the Court to a conservative program with unusual skill. Admirers have faulted the book as one-sided, and no comparably thorough sympathetic biography yet exists, so it is best read as a provocative, well-reported account to be weighed against the opinions and the scholarly literature rather than as the last word. PublicAffairs.
The first serious study of Rehnquist's constitutional philosophy — Sue Davis on the consistent conservatism behind the early solo dissents, written when he was still the Court's right flank rather than its Chief. Princeton University Press.
The standard study of the Court Rehnquist led — Tinsley Yarbrough on the federalism revival, the retreat on rights, and the consolidation of a conservative majority across two decades. Oxford University Press.
A scholarly assessment of the whole tenure, gathered just after his death — essays on federalism, criminal procedure, religion, and judicial administration that take the measure of a Chief who moved the law steadily rightward and ran the building with quiet efficiency. Cambridge University Press.
An affectionate memoir by a friend of Rehnquist's later years — the private man of poker, painting, bad ties, and dry wit behind the austere public Chief. Threshold Editions.
Rehnquist's own accessible history of the institution he led — part narrative, part memoir, revised and expanded from his 1987 original. He recounts the Court's great episodes (the Chase impeachment, the court-packing fight, the Steel Seizure case) with the relish of a man who loved its lore, and offers a revealing window into how he understood the Court's role and his own place in its story. Genial and readable, it is the best entry to Rehnquist in his own voice, and a useful complement to the more critical outside accounts. Alfred A. Knopf / Vintage.
Rehnquist the historian — his readable account of the two great early American impeachment trials, of Justice Samuel Chase (§9) and President Andrew Johnson, and what they settled about the reach of the impeachment power. Written, as it happened, a generation before he would preside over a third. William Morrow.
Rehnquist on civil liberties under the pressure of war — from Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus to the Japanese-American internment — arguing that the Constitution's protections have always bent, and perhaps should, in wartime. A revealing statement of the Chief's own convictions. Alfred A. Knopf.
His last book — a study of the Hayes–Tilden deadlock of 1876 and the electoral commission that broke it, written by the Chief Justice who had just presided over Bush v. Gore. History with an unmistakable contemporary echo. Alfred A. Knopf.
The keystone of the Rehnquist Court's federalism revival. Striking down the Gun-Free School Zones Act, Rehnquist held for a five-to-four Court that Congress's commerce power, though vast, has outer limits — the first such holding since 1937 — because carrying a gun near a school is not economic activity that Congress may regulate. Lopez launched a line of cases (Morrison, the Boerne line, the state-sovereignty decisions) that reasserted the states against national power and revived a debate many had thought closed by the New Deal. Read it as the clearest statement of the constitutional vision Rehnquist spent a career building toward.
The opinion that confounded Rehnquist's critics and admirers alike. A longtime skeptic of Miranda v. Arizona, he might have been expected to seize the chance to overturn it when Congress tried to legislate it away; instead, writing for a seven-to-two Court, he held that Miranda was a constitutional rule Congress could not override, and that its warnings had 'become embedded in routine police practice to the point where [they] have become part of our national culture.' Read it as a study in how institutional stewardship and respect for settled expectations can override a Chief Justice's own doctrinal instincts.
Nixon's own White House counsel, working from the Nixon tapes, reconstructs the accidental, cynical, and finally fateful process that put Rehnquist on the Court in 1971 — 'Renchburg,' as Nixon kept calling him. The appointment-politics account no biography on this shelf covers this deeply. Free Press.
The Reading Path
A researched route through the literature — in order.
- 1.Jenkins, The Partisan — for the fullest life — read critically, as no sympathetic equal exists
- 2.United States v. Lopez — for the federalism revolution he led, in his own hand
- 3.Dickerson v. United States — for the surprise that shows the steward over the ideologue
- 4.Rehnquist, The Supreme Court — for the institution and himself in his own voice
- 5.Yarbrough, The Rehnquist Court — for the Court he remade over two decades
Where the Papers Are Kept
Rehnquist's papers were donated to the Hoover Institution Library and Archives at Stanford, his home state's great research collection, where portions covering his pre-Court career and early years have been opened to researchers in stages under access restrictions. As more of the collection becomes available it will be the essential archive for his three decades on the Court and the conservative legal movement he helped lead. His judicial files are supplemented by materials in other justices' papers at the Library of Congress. Visit →
Ideas for Further Research
- From Lone Ranger to Chief. Rehnquist began as a near-solitary dissenter and ended as the architect of a durable conservative majority. Trace how a justice moves from the margin to the center of the Court's power — through longevity, collegiality, opinion assignment, and the shifting membership around him — and ask what the arc reveals about how legal movements capture institutions over time.
- The federalism revival — and its limits. Lopez and Morrison announced that the commerce power had judicially enforceable limits for the first time since 1937, yet the revolution proved partial: in Gonzales v. Raich (2005) the Court upheld federal drug law against a federalism challenge, and the Affordable Care Act cases later tested the doctrine again. Map how far the Rehnquist Court actually shifted the balance between nation and states, and how much survived him.
- The Jackson memo and the question of candor. As a young clerk to Justice Robert Jackson, Rehnquist wrote a memorandum defending Plessy v. Ferguson's 'separate but equal' during the Court's deliberations over Brown; at his confirmations he said it reflected Jackson's views, not his own — an account many historians dispute. Study the controversy as a case in the ethics of clerkship, the reliability of confirmation testimony, and how a justice's early record shadows a long career. Seat lineage: John Marshall Harlan II §89 → William Rehnquist → Antonin Scalia §103 (his associate seat; he was elevated to Chief Justice in 1986, succeeding Warren Burger §97).