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com Alan Dershowitz: Telling the Truth About Chief Justice Rehnquist Alan Dershowitz Mon Sep 5, 1:16 AM ET My mother always told me that when a person dies, one should not say anyt hing bad about him. History requires truth, not puf fery or silence, especially about powerful governmental figures. So heres the truth about Chief Ju stice Rehnquist you wont hear on Fox News or from politicians.
William Rehnquist set back liberty, equality, and human rights perhap s more than any American judge of this generation. His rise to power spe aks volumes about the current state of American values.
Rehnquist bragged about being first in his class at Stanford Law School. Today Stanford is a great law school with a diverse student body, but in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it discri minated against Jews and other minorities, both in the admission of stud ents and in the selection of faculty.
Stephen Breyer recalled an earlier period of Stanfords history: When my father was at Stanford, he could not join any of the social organizations because he w as Jewish, and those organizations, at that time, did not accept Jews. Rehnquist not only benefited in his class ranking from this discriminati on; When he was nominated to be an ass ociate justice in 1971, I learned from several sources who had known him as a student that he had outraged Jewish classmates by goose-stepping a nd heil-Hitlering with brown-shirted friends in front of a dormitory tha t housed the schools few Jewish students. He also was infamous for tell ing racist and anti-Semitic jokes. As a law clerk, Rehnquist wrote a memorandum for Justice Jackson while th e court was considering several school desegregation cases, including Br own v Board of Education. Rehnquists memo, entitled A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases, defended the separate-but-equal doctrine embo died in the 1896 Supreme Court case of Plessy v Ferguson. Rehnquist con cluded the Plessy was right and should be reaffirmed. When questioned about the memos by the Senate Judiciary Committee in both 1971 and 1986, Rehnquist blamed his defense of segregation on the dead Justice, statin g under oath that his memo was meant to reflect the views of Justice Jackson. But Justice Jackson voted in Brown, along with a unanimous Cou rt, to strike down school segregation.
Re hnquist later admitted to defending Plessy in arguments with fellow law clerks. He did not acknowledge that he committed perjury in front of the Judiciary Committee to get his job. The young Rehnquist began his legal career as a Republican functionary by obstructing African-American and Hispanic voting at Phoenix polling loc ations (Operation Eagle Eye).
e helped challenge the voting qualifications of Arizona black s and Hispanics. But even if he did not person ally harass potential voters, as witnesses allege, he clearly was a bras s-knuckle partisan, someone who would deny the ballot to fellow citizens for trivial political reasons -- and who made his selection on the basi s of race or ethnicity. In a word, he started out his political career as a Republican thug. Rehnquist later bought a home in Vermont with a restrictive covenant that barred sale of the property to ''any member of the Hebrew race. Rehnquists judicial philosophy was result-oriented, activist, and author itarian. He sometimes moderated his views for prudential or pragmatic re asons, but his vote could almost always be predicted based on who the pa rties were, not what the legal issues happened to be. He generally oppos ed the rights of gays, women, blacks, aliens, and religious minorities. He was a friend of corporations, polluters, right wing Republicans, reli gious fundamentalists, homophobes, and other bigots. Rehnquist served on the Supreme Court for thirty-three years and as chief justice for nineteen. Yet no opinion comes to mind which will be rememb ered as brilliant, innovative, or memorable. He will be remembered not f or the quality of his opinions but rather for the outcomes decided by hi s votes, especially Bush v Gore, in which he accepted an Equal Protecti on claim that was totally inconsistent with his prior views on that clau se. He will also be remembered as a Chief Justice who fought for the ind ependence and authority of the judiciary. This is his only positive cont ribution to an otherwise regressive career. Within moments of Rehnquists death, Fox News called and asked for my com ments, presumably aware that I was a longtime critic of the late Chief J ustice. After making several of these points to Alan Colmes (who was sup posed to be interviewing me), Sean Hannity intruded, and when he didnt like my answers, he cut me off and terminated the interview. Only after I was off the air and could not respond did the attack against me begin, which is typical of Hannitys bullying ambush style. He is afraid to at tack when theres someone there to respond. Since the interview, Ive re ceived dozens of e-mail hate messages, some of which are overtly anti-Se mitic.
Another said I am an ignorant socialist left-wing political hack . Yet another informed me that I personally make us all lament the defeat of the Nazis! A more restrained viewer found me to be a disgrace to the Law, to Harvard, and to humanity. All this, for refusing to put a deceptive gloss on a man who made his car eer undermining the rights and liberties of American citizens. My mother would want me to remain silent, but I think my father would hav e wanted me to tell the truth. His latest book is The Case for Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can Be Resolved (Wiley, 20 05).
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