Old Memo Casts More Doubt on Rehnquist’s View of ‘Separate but Equal’ - NYTimes.com

The Justices who unanimously issued
Brown v. Board of Education

At his confirmation hearings William Rehnquist - probably the most conservative voice in the Nixon-era Justice Department blamed on his boss Justice Robert Jackson - the former Nuremberg Prosecutor -   this first person memo defending Plessy v. Ferguson as correctly decided.  I always considered that pure prevarication.  Rehnquist of course went on to do a lot of damage as Associate and then Chief Justice of the United States.  One of his mentees and ideological cohorts - John Roberts - has succeeded him and may well do more damage than Rehnquist had the chance to do. - GWC
Sidebar — Old Memo Casts More Doubt on Rehnquist’s View of ‘Separate but Equal’ - NYTimes.com:
by Adam Liptak

"WASHINGTON — In 1952, a young Supreme Court clerk wrote a memorandum that would come to haunt him.
The court was considering Brown v. Board of Education, the great school desegregation case. The question for the justices was hether to overrule Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 decision that said “separate but equal” facilities were constitutional.
The memo, prepared for Justice Robert H. Jackson, was written in the first person and bore the clerk’s initials — “WHR,” for William H. Rehnquist"

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