Word: nixon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When William Rehnquist was appointed to the Supreme Court by Richard Nixon in 1971, he believed that the court was "heeling" to the left and felt obliged, as he later put it, "to lean the other way." He was not much of a counterweight. The high court at the time was still dominated by liberals from the Earl Warren era, and Rehnquist often found himself in lonely dissent against the Justices' rulings upholding the constitutional rights of blacks, women and the poor. Indeed, Rehnquist was on the short end of so many 8-to-1 votes that his law clerks...
...been lured from a lucrative law- firm job in Washington to the federal bench with strong hints from the Administration that he would be first in line for the next available spot on the court. But Bork carries some political baggage: as acting Attorney General ! in 1973, he obeyed Nixon's order to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox; Elliot Richardson had resigned as Attorney General rather than fire Cox. Scalia offered Reagan the chance to place the first Italian American on the high court. He is nine years younger than Bork, an important consideration for a President who wants...
...consent" of the Senate. Throughout the 19th century, this was taken to mean that the Senate could balk on ideological grounds, and indeed, the Senate refused to confirm some 20 Supreme Court nominations. But in the past 50 years, the only serious challenges (such as the rejection of Nixon Appointees Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell) have occurred when political objections were linked to questions of fitness and competence. Some liberals feel that it is time for the Senate to reassert < its political prerogatives. In that case, Scalia and Rehnquist make inviting targets. "My own view is that the Senate...
Following his clerkship, Rehnquist set up a law practice in Phoenix. There he became a Goldwater conservative who opposed an integration plan for Phoenix public schools in 1967. Brought back to Washington to the Nixon Justice Department by another Phoenix lawyer, Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst, Rehnquist was enlisted in the Administration's battle against student radicals, whom Rehnquist described in a 1969 speech as "the new barbarians." He helped devise legal grounds to round up and detain antiwar ) protesters during the 1971 May Day demonstrations. Later that year Nixon rewarded Rehnquist for his efforts by putting...
...undone the Warren legacies so much as consolidated them, affirming the earlier rulings even as it modified and diluted them. It was a court that could move boldly when it needed to. It upheld the right of the press to publish the Pentagon papers. It ruled unanimously that Richard Nixon could not withhold the damning White House tapes sought by the Watergate special prosecutor. But it did not reverse outright a single one of the major Warren doctrines...