Alan Dershowitz: Telling the Truth About Chief Justice Rehnquist

[Guest guest]

" Mark Hull-Richter " <mhull

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 15:52:53 -0700 (PDT)

FW: Alan Dershowitz: Telling the Truth About Chief Justice

Rehnquist

 

 

Frankly, I was disappointed in Dershowitz's apologetic book about the

Bush v. Gore decision because his conclusion was that there was nothing

that could, or should, be done. Impeaching the five right-wing

lunatics who signed the White House over to the most incompetent

pResident in history wasn't in his cards.

 

However, this summary of Rehnquist's career is noteworthy.

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, September 28, 2005 09:58

Alan Dershowitz: Telling the Truth About

Chief Justice Rehnquist

 

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 anything bad about him. My mother was wrong. History requires

truth, not puffery or silence, especially about powerful

governmental figures. And obituaries are a first draft of

history. So here's the truth about Chief Justice Rehnquist you

won't hear on Fox News or from politicians. Chief Justice William

Rehnquist set back liberty, equality, and human rights perhaps

more than any American judge of this generation. His rise to

power speaks volumes about the current state of American values.

 

Let's begin at the beginning. 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 discriminated against Jews and other minorities,

both in the admission of students and in the selection of

faculty. Justice Stephen Breyer recalled an earlier period of

Stanford's history: " When my father was at Stanford, he could not

join any of the social organizations because he was Jewish, and

those organizations, at that time, did not accept Jews. "

Rehnquist not only benefited in his class ranking from this

discrimination; he was also part of that bigotry. When he was

nominated to be an associate justice in 1971, I learned from

several sources who had known him as a student that he had

outraged Jewish classmates by goose-stepping and heil-Hitlering

with brown-shirted friends in front of a dormitory that housed

the school's few Jewish students. He also was infamous for

telling racist and anti-Semitic jokes.

 

As a law clerk, Rehnquist wrote a memorandum for Justice Jackson

while the court was considering several school desegregation

cases, including Brown v. Board of Education. Rehnquist's memo,

entitled " A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases, " defended

the separate-but-equal doctrine embodied in the 1896 Supreme

Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Rehnquist concluded 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,

stating - under oath - that his memo was meant to reflect the

views of Justice Jackson. But Justice Jackson voted in Brown,

along with a unanimous Court, to strike down school segregation.

According to historian Mark Tushnet, Justice Jackson's longtime

legal secretary called Rehnquist's Senate testimony an attempt to

" smear the reputation of a great justice. " Rehnquist 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 locations ( " Operation Eagle Eye " ). As Richard

Cohen of The Washington Post wrote, " [H]e helped challenge the

voting qualifications of Arizona blacks and Hispanics. He was

entitled to do so. But even if he did not personally harass

potential voters, as witnesses allege, he clearly was a

brass-knuckle partisan, someone who would deny the ballot to

fellow citizens for trivial political reasons -- and who made his

selection on the basis 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. "

 

Rehnquist's judicial philosophy was result-oriented, activist,

and authoritarian. He sometimes moderated his views for

prudential or pragmatic reasons, but his vote could almost always

be predicted based on who the parties were, not what the legal

issues happened to be. He generally opposed the rights of gays,

women, blacks, aliens, and religious minorities. He was a friend

of corporations, polluters, right wing Republicans, religious

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 remembered as brilliant, innovative, or memorable. He

will be remembered not for the quality of his opinions but rather

for the outcomes decided by his votes, especially Bush v. Gore,

in which he accepted an Equal Protection claim that was totally

inconsistent with his prior views on that clause. He will also be

remembered as a Chief Justice who fought for the independence and

authority of the judiciary. This is his only positive

contribution to an otherwise regressive career.

 

Within moments of Rehnquist's death, Fox News called and asked

for my comments, presumably aware that I was a longtime critic of

the late Chief Justice. After making several of these points to

Alan Colmes (who was supposed to be interviewing me), Sean

Hannity intruded, and when he didn't 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 Hannity's bullying ambush style. He is afraid to

attack when there's someone there to respond. Since the

interview, I've received dozens of e-mail hate messages, some of

which are overtly anti-Semitic. One writer called me " a jew prick

that takes it in the a** from ruth ginzburg [sic]. " Another said

I am " an ignorant socialist left-wing political hack .. You're

like a little Heinrich Himmler! (even the resemblance is

uncanny!). " 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 career undermining the rights and liberties of

American citizens.

 

My mother would want me to remain silent, but I think my father

would have wanted me to tell the truth. My father was right.

 

Author -----------------------

Alan Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard. His latest book

is The Case for Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can Be

Resolved (Wiley, 2005).

 

 

Mark Hull-Richter, U.S. Citizen & Patriot

U.S.A. - From democracy to kakistocracy in one fell coup.

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0416-01.htm

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