The essence of Rehnquist's early approach to matters racial was spelled out most recently by Jeffrey Rosen in The New Yorker. In the early 50's, as Brown v. Board of Education was coming before the Supreme Court, Rehnquist was a law clerk for Justice Robert Jackson. In that capacity he prepared a memo that he called "A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases."
His random thought was that the boot of segregation should not be lifted from the throats of American blacks. As Rosen says in his article, "Rehnquist wrote that the Court should not be moved by moral or social concerns."
In the memo, the future Chief Justice said, "In the long run it is the majority who will determine what the constitutional rights of the minority are. I realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by liberal colleagues, but I think Plessy v. Ferguson [the legal foundation for mandatory racial segregation] was right and should be re-affirmed."
Years later, when his confirmation as Chief Justice was on the line, Rehnquist, in a cowardly move, would tell senators that the memo represented Jackson's -- not Rehnquist's -- views.
This canard was demolished in "Simple Justice," Richard Kluger's great history of the Brown v. Board of Education case, published in 1976. That did not prevent Rehnquist from apparently lying through his teeth to save his judicial skin in 1986.
Jeffrey Rosen notes that Rehnquist, while being questioned by Senator Edward Kennedy and others, insisted under oath that the memo represented Jackson's views.
Kennedy asked, "Do the I's refer to you, Mr. Rehnquist?"
"No, I do not think they do," Rehnquist replied.
nytimes.com
Want to take a crack at the semantics of "I" here, JLA? I'm sure you can explain it all as a higher level of integrity. On the integrity front, of course, I'm sure Starr impresses you and Robert Morgenthau doesn't.
Having found nothing to use against the President in more than three years of investigation, Mr. Starr a year ago threw his immense resources into the Monica Lewinsky matter. No detached, professional prosecutor would have undertaken such a case. Robert Morgenthau of New York, perhaps the most respected prosecutor in the country, said last week that Mr. Starr had violated "every rule in the book."
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