In this authoritative reckoning with the eighteen-year record of the Rehnquist Court, Georgetown law professor Mark Tushnet reveals how the decisions of nine deeply divided justices have left the future of the Court; and the nation; hanging in the balance. Many have assumed that the chasm on the Court has been between its liberals and its conservatives. In reality, the division was between those in tune with the modern post-Reagan Republican Party and those who, though considered to be in the Court's center, represent an older Republican tradition. As a result, the Court has modestly promoted the agenda of today's economic conservatives, but has regularly defeated the agenda of social issues conservatives; while paving the way for more radically conservative path in the future.

Follows Rehnquist's career as a young lawyer in Arizona through his journey to Washington though the Warren and Burger courts to his twenty-year tenure as a Supreme Court Chief Justice who favored government power over individual rights.

The Bill of Rights and Civil War Amendments created a triangular power struggle among state, nation and individual. Using chronological court cases, this book examines how the Supreme Court became arbiter among the three claimants to power, sometimes backtracking and sometimes taking a bold leap forward. Focusing on Justice Rehnquist’s lengthy term on the Supreme Court, Steven T. Seitz examines the growth and emphasis of individual sovereignty throughout the twentieth century. Highlighting some of the dispositional problems with Rehnquist decisions, the book uses the sustainable case law standard instead of applauding either conservative or liberal point of view which provides new vantage points on topics like equal protection of women, due process in several arenas, contracts, free speech, sex, and guns.

In 1986, the Supreme Court's leading conservative, William H. Rehnquist was made Chief Justice. Almost immediately, legal scholars, practitioners, and pundits began questioning what his influence would be, and whether he would remake US constitutional corpus in his own image. This collected volume gathers together a distinguished group of scholars, journalists, judges, and practitioners to reflect on the fifteen-year impact of the Rehnquist Court.

This book is a legal biography of William Rehnquist of the U. S. Supreme Court.

Thoughtful, wide-ranging, and intelligently written, this volume is an insightful look at the Rehnquist Court and its impact on law and American life.

When conservatives took control of the federal judiciary in the 1980s, it was widely assumed that they would reverse the landmark rights-protecting precedents set by the Warren Court and replace them with a broad commitment to judicial restraint. Instead, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice William Rehnquist has reaffirmed most of those liberal decisions while creating its own brand of conservative judicial activism. Ranging from 1937 to the present, The Most Activist Supreme Court in History traces the legal and political forces that have shaped the modern Court. Thomas M. Keck argues that the tensions within modern conservatism have produced a court that exercises its own power quite actively, on behalf of both liberal and conservative ends. Despite the long-standing conservative commitment to restraint, the justices of the Rehnquist Court have stepped in to settle divisive political conflicts over abortion, affirmative action, gay rights, presidential elections, and much more. Keck focuses in particular on the role of Justices O'Connor and Kennedy, whose deciding votes have shaped this uncharacteristically activist Court.

The explosive, never-before-revealed story of how William Rehnquist became a Supreme Court Justice, told by the man responsible for his candidacy.