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generously, to allow Congress and the president to fashion policies and programs that met the felt necessities of the time. At the same time, it was the role of the courts, ultimately the Supreme Court, to be the final arbiter of the meaning of the Constitution.

Chapter Two
    T HE J USTICES
    T HE S UPREME C OURT SINCE E ARL W ARREN stepped down has been a different Court—more lawyerly, and less activist. There's no mystery why. Republican presidents opposed to the Warren Court's activism were able to make the large majority of the appointments of the past three decades.
    President Nixon made the first four appointments. In 1969, he replaced Earl Warren with Warren Burger, and then, in 1970, he replaced Abe Fortas with Burger's fellow Minnesotan, Harry Blackmun. Two years later Nixon made his other two appointments, as Lewis Powell, Jr., succeeded Hugo Black and William Rehnquist took the seat vacated by John Marshall Harlan II. In 1975, President Ford replaced William O. Douglas with John Paul Stevens. Then an appointments drought set in: Jimmy Carter became the first president ever to serve a full term without making an appointment to the Supreme Court. A vacancy did occur soon after Ronald Reagan took office, as Potter Stewart (appointed by Eisenhower) stepped down. Reagan took the historic step of naming the first woman: Sandra Day O'Connor. The next vacancy occurred in 1986, when Chief Justice Burger retired. President Reagan elevated Associate Justice Rehnquist to Burger's center seat and then appointed Judge Antonin Scalia, of my former court, to take Rehnquist's now empty chair. A year later, a second member of the Burger Court, Lewis Powell, retired; Reagan appointed Anthony Kennedy. In 1990, President Bush, moving to fill the seat vacated by William J. Brennan, Jr., who had served since 1957, tapped David Souter. A year later, Bush replaced Thurgood Marshall, an appointee of President Johnson, with Clarence Thomas. So it was that from 1969 through 1991, only Republican presidents had picked Supreme Court justices. In his first term, President Clinton got the chance to appoint the next two, and most recent, justices, replacing Byron White (the last holdover from the Warren Court) with Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993 and Harry Blackmun with Stephen Breyer in 1994.
    Today's Court, the Rehnquist Court, thus includes, in addition to Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justices Stevens, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Breyer. Each justice has made distinctive contributions. Yet some have proved, and promise to continue to prove, more influential than the rest. They are, in their order of appointment: the chief justice, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Breyer. They are the justices to watch most closely. Over the past decade, their influence and power have been pivotal in determining the Court's direction. But the other four, especially Clarence Thomas, are not to be overlooked. As we will see, each has made his or her own mark.
    William Hobbs Rehnquist, sixteenth chief justice of the United States, moved to the pivotal center seat at the Court in September 1986 after fifteen years as a very productive associate justice. At the time widely regarded as the smartest justice in the courthouse, he became Chief Justice Burger's go-to colleague.
    In a courthouse filled with suits, lawyerly formality being de rigueur at the time, Rehnquist wore Hush Puppies and sport coats. Efficient at getting the work done, he was at the same time easygoing and well liked around the Court. It was a formidable combination. Brilliant, first in his class at Stanford Law School, yet unstuffy and down-to-earth, then Justice Rehnquist was hugely popular, even among the clerks from liberal chambers. He was especially popular at the “take-a-justice-to-lunch” sessions, a pleasant, informal tradition in which each chambers’ set of law clerks would invite, over the course of the term, each of the other justices to an informal, off-the-record