Make 'em bobble!

William H. Rehnquist, 1972-1986, 1986-2005

William Rehnquist was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1924. His father was a paper salesman and his mother was a local civic activist. He attended Stanford University on the GI Bill and graduated with a B.A. and M.A. in political science. He received another M.A. from Harvard in government in 1950 before attending Stanford Law School. He graduated first in his class in 1952, two places ahead of his future colleague, Sandra Day O'Connor. Following law school, Rehnquist clerked for Justice Robert Jackson, practiced privately in Phoenix, and was active in the Republican Party in Arizona, where he campaigned for Barry Goldwater in 1964. He became assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and screened candidates for Supreme Court nominations in 1964. When Justice John Marshall Harlan retired in 1971, President Richard Nixon nominated a relatively inexperienced Rehnquist to the Court. The Senate confirmed him, 68-26. Fourteen years later, the Senate confirmed him to replace Chief Justice Warren Burger, 65-33.

The Annotated Bobblehead
Justice William H. Rehnquist
Standard edition

The necktie he wore on the first day of President Bill Clinton's trial in the Senate, while performing the only constitutional duty that distinguishes the Chief Justice from his colleagues on the Court. U.S. Const. art. I, sec. 3.

The famous stripes (inspired by the costume of the Lord Chancellor in a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe), which appeared on the Chief Justice’s sleeves in January 1995.

Volume 529 of the United States Reports, which includes Bond v. United States, 529 U.S. 334 (2000), in which the Court, speaking through the Chief Justice, held that a brick of methamphetamine should have been suppressed at Steven Bond's trial for conspiracy and possession because the drugs were found by a Border Patrol agent during an unreasonable search of Bond's green bag.

A map of part of Carbon County, Wyoming, the site of an unconstitutional taking of private property for public use without just compensation, and the subject of one of the Green Bag's favorite Rehnquist opinions. Leo Sheep Co. v. United States, 440 U.S. 668 (1979).

The Annotated Bobblehead
Justice William H. Rehnquist
(supp. 1 - Athens & Rome - 2014)

"[A]n opaque, green party balloon ... " Texas v. Brown, 460 U.S. 730 (1983)

"We hold that Miranda, being a constitutional decision of this Court, may not be in effect overruled by an Act of Congress ...." Dickerson v. U.S., 530 U.S. 428 (2000).

"[T]he FMLA is narrowly targeted at the faultline between work and family - precisely where sex-based overgeneralization has been and remains strongest ...." Nevada v. Hibbs, 538 U.S. 721 (2003).

"[A] 36-foot buffer zone on a public street from which demonstrators are excluded passes muster under the First Amendment ..." (Madsen v. Women's Health Center, 512 U.S. 753 (1994)), and, "[a]lthough one might quibble about whether 15 feet is too great or too small a distance ..., we defer to the District Court's reasonable assessment ..." Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network, 519 U.S. 357 (1997).

"Yet affirmance ... by an equally divided Court would lay down 'one rule in Athens, and another rule in Rome' with a vengeance." Laird v. Tatum, 409 U.S. 824 (1972).

"The term 'school zone' is defined as ... 'within a distance of 1,000 feet from ... a school.'" Lopez v. U.S., 514 U.S. 549 (1995) (quoting § 921(a)(25)).