Justin

“Driving back on that hot June day past some government buildings, the Justice commented that he thought one of the great harms wrought by central air conditioning was that it had enabled the government in Washington to function during the summer, rather than closing up shop and leaving people alone the way it had formerly done.”
― William H. Rehnquist, The Supreme Court

“The New Deal Court was now in place. It had already sounded the death knell for such doctrines of the old Court as “freedom of contract,” and a limiting view of congressional authority under the Commerce Clause.”
― William H. Rehnquist, The Supreme Court

“There is little reason to think that many members of the American public either understood or sympathized with the particular doctrines espoused by the majority of the Court in holding New Deal legislation unconstitutional, but the defeat of the Court-packing plan made it obvious that the public did not want even a very popular president to tamper with the Supreme Court of the United States. Whatever the shortcomings of its doctrine in the public mind, its judgments were not to be reversed by the simple expedient of creating new judgeships and filling them with administration supporters.”
― William H. Rehnquist, The Supreme Court

“The framers reconciled in a somewhat rough-hewn way the need for an antimajoritarian institution such as the Supreme Court to interpret a written constitution within a broader system of government basically committed to majority rule.”
― William H. Rehnquist, The Supreme Court