What is William Rehnquist’s major legacy?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: I think his greatest legacy is that he stopped the constitutional revolution that began with the Warren Court and continued, to a lesser degree, in the Burger Court. But, to a great extent, he did not succeed with the issues that meant the most to him. He did not significantly speed the pace of executions, he did not stop all racial preference, he did not achieve a major revival of states’ rights, and, most important, he did not succeed in overturning Roe v. Wade. What is the Chief Justice’s power, and how does it compare with that of the other Justices? The main power is the power to assign opinions when the Chief Justice is in the majority. The Chief Justice knows that he will get a broad or a narrow ruling depending on whom he assigns. There’s also a little-known power of the Chief Justice, which is that he gets to assign lower-court judges to serve on certain boards and commissions, including the ones that supervise foreign-intelligence surveillance wiretaps. In the
