One of my great regrets is that I didn’t visit the Supreme Court when I had the chance. I worked on Capitol Hill for six months as a senior in college and somehow never set foot inside our country’s secular cathedral.
It wasn’t for lack of respect. Among the reasons to be proud of the United States—and despite its current troubles, there are many—none is more meaningful to me than its commitment to fairness, and its stubborn insistence that its citizens be heard. The Supreme Court exemplifies this basic American value, and sustains our belief in the rule of law.
Of course, the Supreme Court is not really a cathedral. Its nine justices do not channel the Divine when making their decisions (although some folks wish they did). They aren’t infallible, but the members of the court do represent a noble and edifying pursuit—the search for justice. We have never needed contemplative minds more than today, when celebrity culture distracts us from serious problems and a fractious society supplies a steady drip of toxins to the nation’s bloodstream.
Remarkably, Stanford has helped shape four of the justices, including one William Hubbs Rehnquist, ’48, MA ’48, JD ’52, who has been chief justice since 1986. His service on the court provides a moment to analyze his legacy, and to pay tribute. Charles Lane’s story on page 42 does both.
Lane traces the educational influences that Rehnquist took with him from the Farm and draws a line from the teachings of an austere, brilliant Stanford professor, Charles Fairman, to the chief justice’s positions on cases across three decades. In doing so, Lane not only tells Rehnquist’s story, but also gives overdue credit to his mentor.
Although his legal thinking was much discussed and highly influential in his time, Fairman is so little known today that Lane dug for weeks to find enough information to accurately describe him. Given his enormous influence on Rehnquist, Fairman has to be considered an important figure in 20th-century legal circles, yet he died in obscurity in La Jolla, Calif., in 1988. Not a single major newspaper ran his obituary.
Someday we will explore how Stanford managed to produce 45 percent of the Supreme Court. We will help you get to know associate justices Sandra Day O’Connor, ’50, JD’52, Stephen Breyer, ’59, and Anthony Kennedy, ’58, a bit better, and understand the origins of their success. For now, though, we concentrate on the son of a paper salesman from Wisconsin who came west for the weather and found inspiration.
Hail to the Chief.
