Word: burger
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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After the Burger meeting, the President instructed Regan that all candidates to succeed the chief should be sitting Justices or federal judges with well- established judicial track records. The Reaganauts did not want to be rudely surprised. They were mindful that Dwight Eisenhower's choice of Chief Justice, Earl Warren, had seemed like a moderate Republican as Governor of & California and promptly turned out to be an innovative liberal as a jurist. A short list of half a dozen contenders was drawn up. It did not include any of Reagan's old political buddies, such as Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt...
Rehnquist's easy manner and informality stand in stark contrast to his predecessor as Chief Justice. Burger could be courtly, but mainly he was pompous and aloof. There is little doubt which Justice is more popular with his brethren...
...Burger, by almost all accounts, was seldom either. In part this was because he was distracted. Burger liked to remind reporters that he was Chief Justice of the U.S., not of just the Supreme Court, and more than any other chief he worked to improve the somewhat rickety administration of the federal courts. His great ambition, which he never realized, was to create a "super court" of appeals to siphon off some of the burgeoning case load of the Supreme Court...
...writing the opinion. If he is in the minority, then the most senior Justice in the majority assigns the opinion. The opinion-assigning power is important, particularly when the court is narrowly divided, because the Justice who writes the court's opinion can set the terms of the debate. Burger repeatedly irked his colleagues by changing his vote to remain in the majority, and by rewarding his friends with choice assignments and punishing his foes with dreary ones. "Rehnquist is too intellectually honest to do this," says a former Brennan clerk. For Rehnquist the real question is whether...
...large he is consistent," says Law Professor Herman Schwartz of American University. "That's why I don't think he should be chief. I wonder about the choice of a man consistently on the fringes." But Columbia's Blasi contends, "Rehnquist is an excellent court infighter--certainly better than Burger and maybe even better than Earl Warren. He's an intensely political person. Some people see him sitting out there in his own world with his principles, but I think he really likes...