With US Chief Justice Rehnquist at the helm, the Supreme Court continued to expand its role in American life, writes Charles Lane.
To modify an oft-repeated assessment of president Franklin Roosevelt, Chief Justice William Rehnquist not only had a first-class intellect, he also had a first-class temperament.
And over a 33-year career on the court, it was arguably the latter that proved more important.
Rehnquist, who died on Saturday night at the age of 80, could be cool and cutting on paper, especially in the dissents he wrote while an associate justice. He could be very tough on lawyers who showed up unprepared for oral argument.
But among his peers, and even among subordinates such as the law clerks who universally loved working for him, Rehnquist came across very differently: affable, calm, full of humour and, above all, unpretentious.
Whereas his predecessor Warren Burger relished the ceremonial aspects of the job, Rehnquist spent as much of his spare time as possible pursuing hobbies such as swimming, painting and playing bridge.
One of his favourite pastimes was to read novels aloud to his wife, Natalie "Nan" Cornell. She died of cancer in 1991. Sponsor of the court's annual Christmas party, Rehnquist was a notorious small-time gambler. He arranged complex betting pools at the court on everything from the NCAA basketball tournament to presidential elections.
He presided over President Clinton's impeachment trial; during a break in the proceedings, he ran a poker game with his law clerks in a Senate cloakroom.
"Develop a capacity to enjoy pastimes and occupations that many can enjoy simultaneously - love for another, being a good parent to a child, service to your community," he advised a group of law graduates in May 2000.
"All of these take time, and their rewards are much less dramatic than being chosen for high office. But if you have missed out on high office, and have learned to enjoy these other fruits of life, maybe when you look back after 35 years you will be able to say that you did at least come close."
A conservative stalwart appointed as associate justice by president Richard Nixon in 1972, Rehnquist was elevated to Chief Justice in 1986 by president Ronald Reagan. His 33-year tenure on the court was one of the longest and most influential in the institution's history, as he spearheaded a rightward move at the court - first as a lone dissenter, then later as the leader of a five-justice conservative majority.
Rehnquist leaves a towering legacy. As a young lawyer in Phoenix in 1957, he declared a personal war of sorts against the Supreme Court, then headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren.
Rehnquist gave a speech blasting Warren and Justice Hugo Black as "left-wing philosophers". He published a magazine article blaming the Warren court's liberal drift on the "political cast" of the justices' law clerks.
Rehnquist's effort to roll back the modern liberal tide would take him to Arizona Republican Senator Barry Goldwater's ill-fated 1964 presidential campaign, to the Nixon administration justice department and eventually, in 1972, to the court itself. After 33 years there - the last 18 as Chief Justice - Rehnquist could claim to have fought Warren to a draw.
Crucial Warren court rulings - among them the ban on school prayer and the Miranda case guaranteeing a suspect's "right to remain silent" - have survived. And the post-Warren Roe v Wade decision, the abortion rights ruling that Rehnquist tried to overturn, also seems entrenched, for now.
Yet, the Rehnquist court has strengthened the legal position of the police, paved the way for swifter executions, defined constitutional limits on federal power and permitted indirect government funding of religious schools.
During Rehnquist's tenure, the Supreme Court arguably expanded its role in American life, frequently striking down laws passed by Congress, subjecting the president to independent counsel investigations and private lawsuits and, in 2000, settling a presidential election. "When the history of the Supreme Court in the 20th century is written, there will be two great Chief Justices: Earl Warren and William Rehnquist," said Mark Tushnet, a professor at the Georgetown University law centre. "Both presided over courts that changed the law in a very dramatic way."
Still, as his tenure concluded, there was a sense at the court that Rehnquist's most influential days were already behind him. In recent terms, he suffered defeats on issues he cares deeply about, such as affirmative action in university admissions, which the court sustained, and state sovereignty and individual property rights, which it curbed. He cast a vote but expressed no written opinion in the court's historic decision last year granting federal court access to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
Though still ideologically unreconstructed in almost every respect, as Chief Justice he came to acknowledge the limits the law itself places on any individual's ability to alter the court's direction.
Asked in 2001 whether his esteem for Warren had grown, Rehnquist said that it "probably did, partly out of respect for stare decisis. That is the principle that once an issue has been decided, it should stay decided. You can't constantly be relitigating things without doing a lot more damage than just leaving them in place."
(LA Times/Washington Post service)