Justice Backs 'Ideological' Court

Supreme Court Justice William H. Rehnquist visited Harvard yesterday to answer questions at the Law School and preside over a moot court competition. During an hour-long question-and-answer session he said that Senators should vote along ideaological lines in confirmation hearings for Supreme Court justices.

"Can [Senators] vote ideology? I think the answer is yes to a good extent," said Renhquist to the overflow crowd of 350.

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Rehnquist also said that attempts to stack the court usually failed, citing justices who failed to vote along the ideological lines of the Presidents who appointed them. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt '04 both "put people on the court to get them to do certain things. I think both of those Presidents succeeded to an extent. But new issues keep coming up," he said. He then pointed out that Roosevelt nominees voted frequently against civil rights initiatives.

The single tense momen in the question-and-answer session occurred when a law student asked about a memo which the justice had written when he was a clerk at the court during the Brown v. Board of Education case, which began the process of desegregation. The memo said that the doctrine of "seperate but equal" "was right and should be affirmed." Rehnquist answered that he did not remember what he had said when his civil rights record almost cost him his appointment during his own Senate confirmation hearings in 1971.

Throughout the session, Rehnquist refused to comment on several important issues. He claimed that a mandatory retirement age for justices was simply too sensitive a topic to speak on when five of the justices on the court were above the age of 75.

Rehnquist also said that he would not comment on the recent dispute between Attorney General Edwin Meese and Supreme Court Justice William Brennan over the issue of judicial restraint because he had not read their speeches on the subject.

He later said that he fell somewhat on the side of those who believe in a smaller role for the court in determining the parameters within which, the other branches of the government must work.

Saying that he knew only what his daughter, a lawyer, and one of his clerks had told him, Rehnquist also turned away questions on Critical Legal Studies, a branch of legal studies which consider the law either unworkable or badly flawed, and Economics in Law. "It wasn't in the law books when I went to law school in the 1950s," he said.

Moot Justice

Later in the day, Rehnquist joined two other federal judges, Dolores K. Sloviter and R. Lanier Anderson III, on a moot court bench at the Harvard Law School to hear four law students argue a case.

The moot court, a prestigious tradition held yearly since 1911, invites a Supreme Court justice in the fall to hear a team of law students argue a case. The students are chose through several rounds of competition through the fall until two teams of five are chosen to prepare the final case. Two members of each team actually present the case.

"This is supposed to be about the best of the law school," said John C. Dwyer, a first-year law student from San Francisco.

"Arguing in front of a Supreme Court justice would be the pinnacle of a lawyer's career," said Robert L. Meyer, a first-year law student. "This is a substitute version."

The names of the students on the winning team in the trial are put permanently on a plaque in Langdell Hall.

Before giving his decision, Rehnquist gave criticisms to each of the aspiring barristers. "Your voice was quite monotonous," he said to one.

But each of the judges complimented the third year-law students on their skill in preparation and presentation. Rehnquist said, "[Their arguments are] fully the equal of many of the arguments we hear in our court."