Rehnquist ‘pillar’ on high court, Land says

By Tom Strode - Sep 15, 2005

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who died Sept. 3, stood firm for “truth and justice and the U.S. Constitution” in his 33 years on the Supreme Court, ERLC President Richard Land.

Rehnquist, 80, died after battling thyroid cancer since October. He was known as a conservative who sought to interpret the text of the Constitution and opposed judges acting as legislators.

“Judges usually fall into two categories—trees, which can both grow and bend with the changing winds of society, and pillars, which don’t grow and don’t bend,” Land said. “Pillars just stand for truth and justice and the U.S. Constitution as they perceive it, regardless of whether they are in the minority or the majority or whether the editorial pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post approve of them.

“From the beginning of his service on the Supreme Court, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist was a pillar,” he said. “When he was a lonely figure urging judicial and federal restraint or in later years when there was more support for his conservative, federalist views, Chief Justice Rehnquist was a pillar.”

Rehnquist was one of only two dissenters in the 1973 Roe v. Wade opinion, which struck down anti-abortion laws in the states. In that decision, Associate Justice Harry Blackmun wrote that a right to privacy found in the Fourteenth Amendment included the decision to have an abortion.

In Roe, the court’s majority “had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment,” Rehnquist wrote in his dissent.

Rehnquist remained a staunch defender of the right of states to restrict abortion. After President Reagan promoted Rehnquist to the court’s top post in 1986, it twice appeared the chief justice had marshaled a majority to strike a death blow to Roe. But in cases in 1989 and 1992, Associate Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy, respectively, changed their minds and blocked majority opinions against the infamous decision.

Rehnquist joined the Supreme Court as an associate justice in 1972 after being nominated by President Nixon.

He is survived by three children and nine grandchildren. His wife, Natalie, died in 1991.

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