Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist Dies

He soon became known as the "Lone Ranger" because he was so often the sole dissenter on the nine-member court.

Rehnquist opposed the court's short-lived 1972 opinion overturning state death penalty laws. He was one of only two justices to vote against Roe v. Wade in 1973. He opposed affirmative action in higher education. Alone among the justices, Rehnquist said in 1983 that Bob Jones University had a legal right to exclude black students from its campus.

Through it all, Rehnquist was motivated by a basic sympathy for law enforcement and the public order it protected, and a certain disdain for the notion that the Supreme Court existed to establish the fairness in society that some might find lacking. That was a job for the legislature, he insisted.

"[F]or the courts to come along and say in addition to that, you know, 'We just don't like what happened here. We think it's, quote, unjust, close quote' is giving them a rather subjective mandate that I think many people . . . if they fully understood it, would find troubling," he told an interviewer on Fox News in 2001.

He also held the view that the Warren Court had gone beyond what the framers of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment had intended in guaranteeing "equal protection of the laws" by state governments. Rehnquist felt that, in fact, the amendment was meant to proscribe a narrow range of discriminatory conduct and that only the Supreme Court, not Congress, had the power to say what that conduct would be.

He was particularly offended by what he saw as the excessive use of petitions for habeas corpus by criminal defendants to challenge their state convictions and sentences in federal court. Those constitutional challenges affronted state sovereignty, Rehnquist believed, and excessively delayed executions.

Inside the court, Rehnquist was generally well-liked, despite his disagreements with colleagues about the law. Gangling and affable, he lacked pomposity and enjoyed practical jokes -- probably the most famous of which occurred on April Fool's Day 1986, during the tenure of Chief Justice Warren E. Burger.

Rehnquist had a life-size photo cutout of Burger made and sent a photographer out to the front of the court with a sign that read: "Have your picture taken with the chief justice. $1." He then arranged to drive by with Burger, enjoying a hearty laugh at Burger's reaction.

When President Ronald Reagan named him to replace Burger as chief justice, in 1986, Rehnquist brought a new tone to the job.

He was a stickler for decorum and punctuality in the courtroom and occasionally erupted at wayward attorneys. Yet behind the closed doors of the justices' weekly conferences, Rehnquist was appreciated for his evenhandedness and calm -- which justices found a welcome contrast to the imperious Burger.

On Jan. 7, 2002, the 30th anniversary of Rehnquist's swearing-in, Justice John Paul Stevens, who rarely agreed with him on the issues, read a statement from the bench praising the chief justice for "the efficiency, good humor and absolute impartiality that you have consistently displayed when presiding at our Conferences."

Rehnquist believed that the court should reserve its time and effort for cases of national importance that absolutely require its attention; the number of cases decided by the court after briefing and oral argument declined on his watch from 152 in 1986-1987, his first term as chief justice, to 76 in the 2004-2005 term.