William Rehnquist Court (1986-2005)
William Rehnquist was the 16th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, succeeding Warren Burger. Rehnquist had served as an Associate Justice on the Court for nearly 15 years before he was nominated for Chief Justice on June 20, 1986 by President Ronald Reagan. The Senate confirmed Rehnquist on September 17, 1986, and he was sworn into office on September 26, 1986. Rehnquist served as Chief Justice until he died on September 3, 2005 and was succeeded by John Roberts.
The membership of the Rehnquist Court was relatively stable. Two Associate Justices, John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O’Connor, remained on the Court throughout his tenure. Justice Antonin Scalia joined the Court on the same day as Rehnquist, filling the Associate Justice seat that he had left vacant. In 1988, Justice Anthony Kennedy filled a vacancy left by Justice Lewis Powell and began a 30-year tenure. Kennedy was the third choice of President Ronald Reagan, who saw his first nominee fail to clear the Senate and his second nominee withdraw.
Between 1990 and 1994, four new Associate Justices joined the Court. President George H.W. Bush appointed Justices David Souter and Clarence Thomas to replace Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, respectively. After defeating Bush in the 1992 election, President Bill Clinton appointed Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer to replace Justices Byron White and Harry Blackmun, respectively. The membership of the Court did not change again until Rehnquist died. This 11-year period was the longest span without a new appointment in Supreme Court history.
Rehnquist presided over a Court that was more conservative than the preceding Burger Court, on which he had frequently dissented as an Associate Justice. (He had earned the nickname of “Lone Ranger” after a series of solo dissents.) In contrast, Rehnquist often found himself in the majority as a Chief Justice. Justices O’Connor, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy joined him as fellow conservatives for much of his tenure. A competing liberal group consisted of Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer. Since they sometimes broke ranks to vote with the liberals, O’Connor and Kennedy held immense influence over outcomes.
The Rehnquist Court plunged into controversy after the 2000 presidential election, which pitted Republican nominee George W. Bush against Democrat nominee Al Gore. The presidency hinged on 25 electoral votes from Florida. A month after the election, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide recount of ballots missed by vote tabulation machines. In a 5-4 decision, Rehnquist and his fellow conservatives stopped the recount, thus handing victory to Bush. The Court faced harsh criticism for intervening in the election. Much of the nation lost trust in both the Court and the election process as a result.
Associate Justices on the Rehnquist Court:
- William Brennan (1956-1990)
- Byron White (1962-1993)
- Thurgood Marshall (1967-1991)
- Harry Blackmun (1970-1994)
- Lewis Powell (1972-1987)
- John Paul Stevens (1975-2010)
- Sandra Day O’Connor (1981-2006)
- Antonin Scalia (1986-2016)
- Anthony Kennedy (1988-2018)
- David Souter (1990-2009)
- Clarence Thomas (1991-present)
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1993-2020)
- Stephen Breyer (1994-2022)
Selected Landmark Cases of the Rehnquist Court:
Author: John Paul Stevens
Topic: Property Rights & Land Use
A city's decision to take property for the purpose of economic development satisfied the public use requirement of the Fifth Amendment.
Roper v. Simmons (2005)
Author: Anthony Kennedy
Topic: Death Penalty & Criminal Sentencing
The Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments forbid imposition of the death penalty on offenders who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed.
Van Orden v. Perry (2005)
Author: William Rehnquist
Topic: Religion
While the Ten Commandments are religious, they also have a historical meaning. Simply having religious content or promoting a message consistent with a religious doctrine does not run afoul of the Establishment Clause.
Crawford v. Washington (2004)
Author: Antonin Scalia
Topic: Criminal Trials & Prosecutions
When testimonial statements are at issue, the only indicium of reliability sufficient to satisfy constitutional demands is confrontation.
Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)
Author: Sandra Day O’Connor
Topic: Equal Protection
The narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body is not prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause.
Lawrence v. Texas (2003)
Author: Anthony Kennedy
Topic: Due Process; LGBTQ+ Rights
The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to choose to enter upon relationships in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons.
U.S. v. Morrison (2000)
Author: William Rehnquist
Topic: Powers of Congress
Congress may not regulate non-economic, violent criminal conduct based solely on its aggregate effect on interstate commerce. The Constitution requires a distinction between what is national and what is local.
Bush v. Gore (2000)
Author: Per Curiam
Topic: Voting & Elections; Equal Protection
The use of standardless manual recounts after a presidential election violated the Equal Protection Clause.
Clinton v. City of New York (1998)
Author: John Paul Stevens
Topic: Separation of Powers
There is no constitutional authorization for the President to amend or repeal an Act of Congress.
Washington v. Glucksberg (1997)
Author: William Rehnquist
Topic: Due Process; Health Care
A “right” to assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause. Thus, a state law banning physician-assisted suicide does not violate due process.
Printz v. U.S. (1997)
Author: Antonin Scalia
Topic: Powers of Congress
Congressional action compelling state officers to execute federal laws is unconstitutional. The federal government's power would be augmented immeasurably and impermissibly if it were able to impress into its service, and at no cost to itself, the police officers of the 50 states.
City of Boerne v. Flores (1997)
Author: Anthony Kennedy
Topic: Religion
Although Congress can enact legislation enforcing the constitutional right to the free exercise of religion, its power to enforce under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment is only preventive or remedial.
U.S. v. Virginia (1996)
Author: Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Topic: Equal Protection
Parties who seek to defend gender-based government action must demonstrate an exceedingly persuasive justification for that action. The justification must be genuine and must not rely on overly broad generalizations about the different talents, capacities, or preferences of males and females.
Romer v. Evans (1996)
Author: Anthony Kennedy
Topic: Equal Protection; LGBTQ+ Rights
The Equal Protection Clause does not permit a status-based classification of persons undertaken for its own sake. Thus, a state constitutional amendment violated the Equal Protection Clause when it precluded all legislative, executive, or judicial action at any level of state or local government designed to protect the status of persons based on their homosexual, lesbian, or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices, or relationships.
U.S. v. Lopez (1995)
Author: William Rehnquist
Topic: Powers of Congress
Congress may regulate the use of the channels of interstate commerce, regulate and protect the instrumentalities of interstate commerce (or persons or things in interstate commerce), and regulate activities that have a substantial relation to interstate commerce.
New York v. U.S. (1992)
Author: Sandra Day O’Connor
Topic: Powers of Congress; Climate Change & Environment
While Congress has substantial power under the Constitution to encourage the states to provide for the disposal of the radioactive waste generated within their borders, the Constitution does not confer upon Congress the ability simply to compel the states to do so. More generally, Congress may not commandeer the states' legislative processes by directly compelling them to enact and enforce a federal regulatory program, but instead it must exercise legislative authority directly upon individuals.
R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992)
Author: Antonin Scalia
Topic: Free Speech
Areas of speech that can be regulated because of their constitutionally proscribable content still cannot be made vehicles for content discrimination unrelated to their distinctively proscribable content. However, when the basis for the content discrimination consists entirely of the very reason why the entire class of speech at issue is proscribable, no significant danger of idea or viewpoint discrimination exists. Another valid basis for according differential treatment to even a content-defined subclass of proscribable speech is that the subclass happens to be associated with particular secondary effects of the speech, so the regulation is justified without reference to the content of the speech.
Lee v. Weisman (1992)
Author: Anthony Kennedy
Topic: Religion
Including clergy who offer prayers as part of an official public school graduation ceremony is forbidden by the Establishment Clause.
Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., Inc. (1991)
Author: Sandra Day O’Connor
Topic: Copyrights
The originality requirement necessitates independent creation plus a modicum of creativity. Although a compilation of facts may possess the requisite originality because the author typically chooses which facts to include, in which order to place them, and how to arrange the data so that readers may use them effectively, copyright protection extends only to those components of the work that are original to the author.
Employment Division v. Smith (1990)
Author: Antonin Scalia
Topic: Religion; Health Care
A law prohibiting certain drug use is constitutional under the Free Exercise Clause if it is facially neutral and generally applied. More generally, the Free Exercise Clause does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a law that incidentally forbids (or requires) the performance of an act that their religious belief requires (or forbids) if the law is not specifically directed to religious practice and is otherwise constitutional as applied to those who engage in the specified act for non-religious reasons.
Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dept. of Health (1990)
Author: William Rehnquist
Topic: Due Process; Health Care
The Constitution does not forbid a state from requiring that evidence of an incompetent person's wishes as to the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment be proved by clear and convincing evidence.
Texas v. Johnson (1989)
Author: William Brennan
Topic: Free Speech
The government generally has a freer hand in restricting expressive conduct than in restricting the written or spoken word. However, it may not proscribe particular conduct because it has expressive elements.
Ward v. Rock Against Racism (1989)
Author: Anthony Kennedy
Topic: Free Speech
Even in a public forum, the government may impose reasonable restrictions on the time, place, or manner of protected speech, provided that the restrictions are justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech, they are narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest, and they leave open ample alternative channels for communication of the information.
South Dakota v. Dole (1987)
Author: William Rehnquist
Topic: Powers of Congress
The exercise of the spending power must be in pursuit of the general welfare. If Congress desires to condition the states' receipt of federal funds, it must do so unambiguously, enabling the states to exercise their choice knowingly, cognizant of the consequences of their participation. Conditions on federal grants must be related to a national concern.
