Franks: Nation Owes Debt of Gratitude to Chief Justice Rehnquist

GUEST COMMENTARY

Chief Justice Rehnquist, a Great Chief Justice

By Congressman Trent Franks

September 7, 2005

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist was one of America's great Chief Justices. This nation has suffered a great loss with his passing. In his tireless defense of the United States Constitution, he strongly advocated for a judiciary that applies the law rather than legislates from the bench.

We as Americans should be grateful for our founding fathers and the genius of the Constitutional system they left to us: a framework that protects human dignity and individual freedom by enforcing limits on government power. It is incumbent upon ours and future generations to jealously guard that precious gift bestowed upon us by our forebears. Chief Justice Rehnquist spent decades on the highest court in the land acting as the Constitution's protector.

He was a Constitutional "originalist," defending the process of interpretation of the law that is constrained by the text and original meaning of that great document. There is a fundamental reason why we as a self-governing people put pen to paper to memorialize our Constitution and laws. The written word is an agreement between the people and the government. We write it all down to keep a record and understanding of the limits placed on government by the will of the people. Chief Justice Rehnquist's efforts advanced this understanding that at times the federal courts must enforce limitations on federal power while recognizing the preeminent role of democratically-elected institutions at both the state and federal levels.

Chief Justice Rehnquist was a valiant defender of states' rights in recognition of the superiority of the federalist system when governing peoples of divergent views, faith and cultures. He was influential in leading the Court back toward the original intent of the Constitution after decades of abuse by a liberal activist court born of the Roosevelt Era and a New Deal philosophy.

This New Deal activist Court had actually delivered such bizarre rulings as in Wickard v. Filburn, ruling that a man in Ohio who was growing wheat in his own back yard as a means to feed his family and his own livestock had somehow violated the interstate commerce clause of the United States Constitution because the quantity of wheat he grew could be sold. Year after merciless year, a liberal Supreme Court drunk with self-imposed power delivered an unprecedented assault upon the rights of the states and of the people.

During his early years on the Court, Justice Rehnquist was often the lone dissenter to outrageous decisions, yet his adherence to the Constitution expressed in some of these early dissents had great influence upon the Court as evidenced in later majority opinions.

He was also instrumental in fighting back assaults on religious freedom in his efforts to make clear that the Constitution ensures government neutrality in matters of religious conscience rather than requiring the removal of religion altogether from the public square.

Chief Justice Rehnquist was often found standing in the breach in defense of the Constitution, endowing this nation through the years with a noble legacy of resistance to a liberal activist Court determined to make its own law and enact its own agenda.

He gave the American people his last full measure of devotion and stayed at his post through personal sacrifice while fighting cancer. To the very end, he led a brave and good-natured effort to restore the Supreme Court to its ethical grounding. For his lifetime of service to this nation and to the future of self-governance, this nation owes Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist a profound debt of gratitude.