The Rehnquist Court

The ruling in the United States v. Nixon case was by a vote of 8-0, with Associate Justice William Rehnquist not participating in the decision. Before joining the Court in 1972, Rehnquist had served as a deputy attorney general in the Nixon Administration, and so he recused (that is, disqualified) himself from the case involving the Watergate tapes. During his early years on the Burger Court, Rehnquist frequently found himself in the minority, consistently rejecting both the extension of federal power over the states and the widening of the scope of the equal protection clause.

In 1986, upon Burger's retirement from the Court, President Ronald Reagan nominated Rehnquist to assume the Chief Justice's seat; despite some opposition from liberal groups, the Senate confirmed the appointment. To fill Rehnquist's former associate justice position, Reagan selected D.C. Circuit Judge Antonin Scalia, a devout conservative. By 1991, when President Bush chose Clarence Thomas to replace the retiring Thurgood Marshall, Rehnquist presided over a Court with five solid conservative votes on many issues.

Rehnquist's mark upon the Court is clearly evident in two areas. A firm believer in states' rights, Rehnquist has led the Court to limit the authority of Congress and to reinvigorate the doctrine of sovereign immunity, beginning with the 1995 case of U.S. v. Lopez. This was discussed in the Timelines on Federalism and on Civil Rights.

The other constitutional doctrine where Rehnquist's influence can be seen is that of separation of church and state. Under the traditional interpretation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment, government is prohibited from endorsing a particular religion, or from endorsing religious views over nonreligious views. When Rehnquist first joined the Burger Court in the 1970s, the Court had just adopted a standard barring the government from "advancing or inhibiting religion" and from "fostering an excessive government entanglement with religion."Under this standard, Rehnquist often found himself in the minority on cases involving government aid to private religious schools. However, at the end of the 2001-2002 term, Rehnquist authored a 5-4 majority opinion upholding an Ohio school voucher program under which 96 percent of the voucher recipients used government funds to send their children to private religious schools.

Despite its conservative shift with respect to federalism and establishment clause issues, the Rehnquist Court has adopted a more moderate stance in other areas. It has rejected several efforts to limit freedom of speech, upheld the right of women to attend previously all-male military academies, and, as discussed in the Civil Liberties Timeline, 1992 entry, struck down a Colorado law prohibiting local governments from protecting homosexuals against discrimination. With the Chief Justice in the minority, the Rehnquist Court has upheld the controversial Roe v. Wade decision mentioned above. Finally, Rehnquist himself wrote the majority opinion in a 2000 decision upholding the famous Miranda standards for interrogation of criminal suspects.