Former Clerks Pay Tribute To 'The Chief'

Several of those who saw the chief justice last Saturday said he appeared weak. "Obviously, he was a man whose health was going through a struggle," one former clerk said.

But Hoffmann, noting that Rehnquist has appeared on the bench to deliver opinions with his colleagues on each of the past six Mondays, said he thought his condition may have stabilized. "I did not have the feeling that . . . this is the last time we'll all do this," he said.

Though he has put in appearances at the croquet games and trivia contests of past reunions, the dinner was the only one of last weekend's events that Rehnquist attended this year. He remained for half an hour.

He was present just long enough to take in this year's version of the annual skit in which clerks impersonate the boss and satirize the events of the latest term.

In keeping with the valedictory mood, this year's skit was a spoof of the game show "To Tell the Truth," with one current clerk and four former clerks, including some from Rehnquist's early years on the court, pretending to be the boss.

The gag was that each represented the chief justice as he looked during a different era of his tenure. The '70s edition of the chief justice came equipped with pasted-on sideburns. Sideburns were Rehnquist's tonsorial trademark in those days.

John G. Roberts, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit -- and the subject of much speculation that he might be named by President Bush to succeed Rehnquist -- played the Rehnquist of 1980, the year Roberts clerked.

Two of Rehnquist's fellow members of the court, Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy, contributed videotaped messages to the occasion.

Scalia brought the house down by jokingly denying any ambitions to be chief justice himself. He would rather be pope, he quipped, according to witnesses.