Former Aide to Direct Think Tank Named After Chief Justice
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
A woman who built a reputation for dedication and hard work behind the scenes at the Supreme Court is about to become the public face of a new think tank in Arizona.
Sally M. Rider, 48, who served for five years as the top staff aide to then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, will become the inaugural director of the William H. Rehnquist Center on the Constitutional Structures of Government at the University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law, the school announced yesterday.
The center will not officially open until fall 2007. It will be "a nonpartisan think tank and outreach center on constitutional law," with a focus on federal-state relations and the balance of power between the courts, the Congress and the president, said Toni M. Massaro, dean of the law school.
She said the center will work with the law school to reach a national and international audience, and with legal scholars and policymakers in providing research and a venue for debate about the structure of government.
"The center that we have in mind will need an expert administrator who is also a talented lawyer and who has the kind of national connections and profile that Sally does," Massaro said. "Everybody is thrilled that she would take this on. And she will inspire a lot of trust in people that this is going to be done at the very best level."
Rider was the equivalent of a chief of staff to Rehnquist, who died of cancer in September at age 80 after serving 33 years on the court. She helped draft Rehnquist's annual "state of the judiciary" report, assisted in the preparation of the court's annual budget request to Congress and generally eased the chief justice's administrative load by helping tame the flow of paper at the court.
She was the first woman to hold the job, created by Congress in 1972, and now serves Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. in the same capacity.
An Arizona native, Rider previously worked as a trial attorney in the Justice Department, as a legal adviser at the State Department and as counsel for a House committee. She said yesterday that she is ready to return to the university where she earned her bachelor's and law degrees.
"Tucson is home," Rider said. "I was born there, and my parents live in Phoenix, and I have six brothers and sisters who are spread out around the Southwest. I have two daughters, 6 and 7, and if I don't move now I think it's hard to move much later. And the job is just a perfect fit. . . . Having worked for Chief Justice Rehnquist, the idea of being able to help establish something that is a tangible legacy to him is very appealing to me."
Rehnquist, a Wisconsin native, moved to Arizona in the early 1950s. He became active in the Republican Party and wrote speeches for Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) in his losing 1964 presidential campaign. For more than a decade toward the end of his life, Rehnquist taught a two-week course at the University of Arizona's law school each February.
Rider will spend much of her first year on the job raising the money needed to get the center off the ground and also planning law and policy conferences, short-term visits from judges and legal scholars, and educational materials for college and high school students.
Massaro said the center needs to raise $5 million, and has targeted fundraising efforts at Rehnquist's former law clerks, foundations and the federal government. Arizona's senators, Republicans John McCain and Jon Kyl, have introduced a bill that would send the center $2 million a year in federal grants for five years to help pay for operations, but it has not yet passed the committee stage.
As for the prospect of getting money from the state of Arizona, "that would be great," Massaro said, "but I'm not that far yet."
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