Was Rehnquist hated by the liberals

[David Hume]

I was too young when he was alive, and didn't know anything about SC. Was CJ Rehnquist hated by the liberals just like Alito and Thomas nowadays, or more similar to Roberts?

I guess he might not be that hated. The nation was not as polarized, and he appears moderate comparing to Scalia and Thomas. But I would be surprised if he has a net positive review among Dems, as Roberts currently.

[Stranger in a strange land]

I was too young when he was alive, and didn't know anything about SC. Was CJ Rehnquist hated by the liberals just like Alito and Thomas nowadays, or more similar to Roberts?

I guess he might not be that hated. The nation was not as polarized, and he appears moderate comparing to Scalia and Thomas. But I would be surprised if he has a net positive review among Dems, as Roberts currently.

Somewhere in between, for the reasons you cite. Democrats of the time certainly didn't hold a positive view of him, but they didn't exactly hate him either.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I was too young when he was alive, and didn't know anything about SC. Was CJ Rehnquist hated by the liberals just like Alito and Thomas nowadays, or more similar to Roberts?

I guess he might not be that hated. The nation was not as polarized, and he appears moderate comparing to Scalia and Thomas. But I would be surprised if he has a net positive review among Dems, as Roberts currently.

No he wasn't. He might've been a tad more fair and less hackish than Thomas and Alito, but he was definitely an archconservative through and through and quite hated.

For all the very understandable hatred of him that Scalia got, he was probably the most fair conservative justice the court has had in decades. A great example is his decision and casting of the effectively deciding vote in Texas v. Johnson where he said that while he was utterly repulsed by flag desecration and that he deeply wished there was a way to prohibit in accordance with the First Amendment, that just wasn't the case.

[Del Tachi]

Yes, go read about how controversial his confirmation hearings were.

[David Hume]

Yes, go read about how controversial his confirmation hearings were.

Rehnquist was significantly more conservative when he was associate justice, in more opinion more conservative than Thomas and Alito. But he moderated after becoming chief.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

In what ways did he "moderate" as Chief Justice? The only thing I can think of is he was regarded as being quite fair and received accolades from Democrats for how he presided over Bill Clinton's impeachment trial.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

My mother as a younger lawyer wore a black armband to work the day the Senate confirmed Rehnquist as Chief Justice.

Chief Justice Rehnquist ran the Court in a generally fair, scrupulous, competent way that commanded wide respect, and in that sense he was no longer "hated by the liberals" exactly, but he did not moderate in terms of his views. He was content to be, or at least resigned to being, in ideological minorities in many of the sorts of cases that Roberts clearly chafes at not being able to control the opinions for.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Yeah the most "moderate" thing about Rehnquist was that he was not fundamentally a partisan hack like Alito, which isn't really saying much of anything...Alito is probably the most partisan Supreme Court Justice since at least the Reconstruction Era.

[Geoffrey Howe]

Yes, but he never had the rhetorical flair or outward combativeness which made Scalia so attractive to the right and conversely frustrating to the left. At least publicly, he moderated his views (and slightly his votes, notably upholding Miranda, which he would never have done at the beginning) when he became Chief Justice - so he was probably better known when he was an old figure with two Justices to his right than as the young dissenting firebrand.

[Fuzzy Bear]

In reading Bob Woodward's The Brethren, Rehnquist emerges as a likable figure.  He got a kick out of the fact that one of the Ivy League Schools had a "Rehnquist Club" and the head of it was the "Grand Rehnquisitor".  He was remarkable unstuffy, in comparison to Warren Burger, whom few had actual affection for.  This is separate from the opinions of Rehnquist's work as a jurist, but, no, he was not hated personally.  He was, however, the leading conservative ideologue on the Court and, unlike Burger, was willing to stand alone in dissent.  ("Always to the right, but never alone."  That was an assessment of Burger, who sought to control the authorship of decisions more than any Chief Justice in recent years.)

[Torie]

Rehnquist was never actually "hated" much. It was a different era where "hate" in this context was much thinner on the ground. I remember a very "liberal" law prof to whom I delivered mail as the Law School mail boy at the University of Chicago to get some spare change for recreational drugs, that I did not want my Dad to pay for, saying that he thought the man had no heart at the time he was up for nomination. That is about as far as he was moved to go, and we did chat from time to time, since we both  seemed to enjoy our encounters.

[David Hume]

Rehnquist was never actually "hated" much. It was a different era where "hate" in this context was much thinner on the ground. I remember a very "liberal" law prof to whom I delivered mail as the Law School mail boy at the University of Chicago to get some spare change for recreational drugs, that I did not want my Dad to pay for, saying that he thought the man had no heart at the time he was up for nomination. That is about as far as he was moved to go, and we did chat from time to time, since we both  seemed to enjoy our encounters.

What did he say about Scalia, Thomas and Alito?

[Torie]

Rehnquist was never actually "hated" much. It was a different era where "hate" in this context was much thinner on the ground. I remember a very "liberal" law prof to whom I delivered mail as the Law School mail boy at the University of Chicago to get some spare change for recreational drugs, that I did not want my Dad to pay for, saying that he thought the man had no heart at the time he was up for nomination. That is about as far as he was moved to go, and we did chat from time to time, since we both  seemed to enjoy our encounters.

What did he say about Scalia, Thomas and Alito?

They all came later. This was when Rehnquist was nominated. I moved on to the Michigan Law School as a student rather than a mail boy for the U of C law school.

[David Hume]

Rehnquist was never actually "hated" much. It was a different era where "hate" in this context was much thinner on the ground. I remember a very "liberal" law prof to whom I delivered mail as the Law School mail boy at the University of Chicago to get some spare change for recreational drugs, that I did not want my Dad to pay for, saying that he thought the man had no heart at the time he was up for nomination. That is about as far as he was moved to go, and we did chat from time to time, since we both  seemed to enjoy our encounters.

What did he say about Scalia, Thomas and Alito?

They all came later. This was when Rehnquist was nominated. I moved on to the Michigan Law School as a student rather than a mail boy for the U of C law school.

You mean around 1971? At that time liberals wound not know how conservative could be. And at that time court was not so polarizing An issue. Warren Burger got confirmed with only three nay votes.

[progressive85]

From what I recall he was a reliable, but rather uncontroversial (at least compared to some of the others) vote for the court's right.  He wasn't the most charming or alluring character in the world - I guess he was stoic and old.  Honestly I think he's one of the more forgettable Chief Justices in history.  John Roberts has been much more important I think, but then again the court's very different than it was with Rehnquist.

[(no subject)]

FYi, he never took back openly being a loathsome segregationist and racist. He opposed Brown vs Board of Education. Hopefully he is in Rocky Valentine’s “other place”, because there is no redemption for someone who did that.

[MarkD]

Many liberals "hate" Rehnquist because they believe he committed perjury at his confirmation hearings, both in 1971 when being considered for Associate Justice and again in 1986 when being considered for Chief Justice.

Back in 1952, Rehnquist had just graduated from Stanford Law School and was hired right away to be a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson for the 1952-53 term. During that term, the Court heard its first oral arguments for the case of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Court was being asked to overturn its precedent in Plessy v. Ferguson. And during that term, Rehnquist wrote a "memorandum of law" for Justice Jackson in which he stated, "I realize that [this] is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by 'liberal' colleagues, but I think Plessy was right and should be reaffirmed."

In both 1971 and 1986, during his confirmation hearings, Rehnquist was asked about this memo, and he admitted that he wrote it, but he claimed that Justice Jackson had asked Rehnquist for some "talking points" so he could explain his views to his colleagues on the Court. Rehnquist said that every time he used the word "I" in that memo, he was describing Jackson's views, not his own views. While it IS true that, during that 1952-53 term, Jackson was leaning toward sustaining the Plessy precedent, to many liberals, it simply does not make any sense that Jackson would ask any of his clerks for talking points, as if he were unsure what he would say and needed help to explain himself. Robert Jackson had a natural gift for eloquence, and if he asked any of his clerks to write a memo, he would only do so because he wanted the clerks to explain their own views. Therefore many liberals believed Rehnquist was committing perjury, and in doing so was smearing the reputation of one of the Court's greatest and most gifted members.

[(no subject)]

Rehnquist was a segregationist and a racist and a slimeball just for that.