An Open Letter to Judge William Rehnquist

This week, we didn’t just lose a great man, and jurist. We lost a man with a quirky fashion sense, an undying enthusiasm for musical theater, and a firm voice against civil rights.

The best way for me to express myself is through a letter. I hope you can hear me, Your Honor-- no, I know you can hear me. Because as you fought to merge the church and state, you proved yourself to be a man of faith. And so, I know you’re up there, listening as I read.

Dearest Your honor,

we will miss you so very, very, very much. From the start you did so much for your nation. You served your country nobly during world war II. While you never saw combat, you were an excellent weather observer and for that, this country is truly grateful.

After serving your country meteorigically, if not militarily, you started your brave and unpopular fight against civil rights. I’ll never forget your charmingly titled A “Random Thought on the Segregation Cases” where you (expressed your belief in the separate but equal doctrine, and) argued that segregation should be upheld. Years later you fought the passage of a Phoenix ordinance permitting Blacks to enter stores and restaurants. But perhaps your most moving achievement was “operation eagle eye” when you intimidated black and Hispanic voters in Phoenix while providing “ballot security.” And I can’t help but notice how you never sat directly next to the black man Clarence Thomas, or the Jewess Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

You led the court in a number of great decisions; striking down the commie federal minimum wage for state and local employees, overturning the hippy dippy free love gun free school zones Act, rejecting the bleeding heart liberal attack on the death penalty as racially discriminatory, and denying the well, gay, argument for constitutionality of gay rights. a visionary ahead of your times, you lost some battles as well. While the court voted against you, you knew that the following were unconstitutional: that affirmative action, abortion. And you argued for the constitutionality of removing jurors because of their race, the death penalty for minors, denying Guantanamo detainees at legal rights, and so many other things that give our constitution its meaning and make this country great. And you were the only justice on the bench brave enough to defend the prestigious Bob Jones’s university right to ban inter-racial dating. Thank you for leading the court, in Bush vs. Gore, stopping the recount in Florida, and giving us a president we did not, but definitely should have, voted for.

While the media has been appropriately adulatory, it shocks and awes me to know that there are those out there who would utter a bad word about you. I’m most hurt by the derisive comments of a former president, who I admire greatly as a president, but whose appraisal of you was unfair and inaccurate. When he first met you, the great Richard Millhouse Nixon asked an Aid about you saying: “Who the hell is that clown?" "Is he Jewish? He looks it. That's a hell of a costume he's wearing, just like a clown." Apparently he was referring to your Hush Puppy shoes and a pink shirt that clashed with a psychedelic tie. But what hurts me most of all, your honor, is that Nixon thought that you, a man who bought property in an “explicitly Hebrew free” lake community, could be Jewish. It pains me to know that he would refer to you as “Renchburg.” Ultimately you proved your purity, and were appointed to the court by Nixon.

Speaking of Hushpuppies, who can forget your judicious fashion taste. You would stroll around with a silent dignity, with rubber soled-hushpuppies, size 14D, on your feet, and a jaunty straw boater on your head. How thrilling it was, to see you add 4 gold stripes to each sleeve of you robe. Few know that you were inspired by the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Iolanthe. In a local production, the judge character, a father of an illegitimate half-mortal and half-fairy, appears with 4 gold stripes on his sleeves. Even as you succumbed to the thyroid cancer that would eventually claim your life, you embraced your mortality with style and grace, sporting a scarf, revealing just a hint of tracheotomy. As is so often true, from tragedy, beauty is born.

You loved amateur theatricals, show tunes and patriotic songs. You would lead your clerks in sing-alongs and performed Christmas carols solos at the court holiday party. And I know I speak for many, when I say every time I attend a musical, every time I sing Silent night, or God Bless America, every time I protest affirmative action, every time I demonstrate outside of clinic, every time I challenge a voter “of color”, I will shed a tear and think of you and see your beautiful face and hear the silent steady tread, of your hushpuppies.

Sincerely,
Katherine Rose Halper