Alan Dershowitz. Feel the Lo-o-o-ve!

Just after Justice Rehnquist's death was announced, Fox had a special edition of Hannity and Colmes featuring telephone interviews with a selection of legal pundits. When Alan Dershowitz was asked how Rehnquist's death would change the court and what his legacy would be. His answer was worthy of Chuck Schumer or Ted Kennedy. He called Rehnquist an activist judge, and a reliable vote for the Republicans. Then the topper:

He was much more activist [than the Warren court]. And I think the Rehnquist court was never the Rehnquist court. He moved more toward the center as he became chief justice and as he had Scalia and Thomas on his right flank and of course most of the rest of the court in the center or on his left flank. It--the decisions of Justice Rehnquist are not taught in law schools as great decisions. He'll be remembered primarily for his votes rather than for the content or quality of his decisions. And it's consistent throughout his life. He started his career by being a kind of Republican thug who pushed and shoved to keep African-American and Hispanic voters from voting.

(Italics mine)

At which point he was cut off and another guest brought on.

I was listening to that exchange, which didn't surprise me much, considering Professor D's demonstrated gift for tact and decorum. This guy trains future lawyers. I hope he doesn't teach ethics.

As for the substance of Dershowitz's claims, James Taranto notes,

this is an argument the left has lost. Rather than defend, say, Roe v. Wade (in which Rehnquist dissented) as a justifiable work of judicial activism, they invent tendentious redefinitions of the term in a transparent attempt at judicial jujitsu. By Dershowitz's lights, Roe wasn't "activist" at all because it struck down a state law rather than a "congressionally enacted statute."

Apparently, the left has determined that the "activist" tag has legs and has adopted the same argument, claiming that any justice who would roll back past overreaching by the Court such as Roe would violate Stare Decisis and therefore be "activist." I view "activist" as meaning a judge who substitutes his own policy views for those of the duly constituted policy branch, the legislative.

I didn't remember anything about Rehnquist being a thug. Apparently it goes back to his activity in the Republican Party in Phoenix in the 1960s. He served as a poll watcher in the 1962 elections, when he and others were on the lookout for illegal voters and challenged Hispanic voters to prove they were entitled to vote. This was said to be done for the purpose of intimidating minorities from voting. Of course, the Democrats call this "disenfranchizing" minority voters. The "thug" comes from a shoving match he got into during that period. I don't know who started the shoving, but I doubt it was Rehnquist.

Update: Dershowitz defends his remarks and demonstrates his own thuggish tendencies: "Chief Justice William Rehnquist set back liberty, equality, and human rights perhaps more than any American judge of this generation." He provides a lot of hearsay about Rehnquist and some stories about memos he wrote as a law clerk defending the "separate but equal", but doesn't really cite any cases, but Bush v. Gore to demonstrate Rehnquist's worst sin, being a Republican. Then he adds an attack on Fox News and Sean Hannity and cites some hate email he received after the show, I guess as proof that anybody who defends Rehnquist condones sending Dershowitz obscene hate mail.

Poor Alan! He came on TV within minutes after the death of a Supreme Court justice and began calling him names and attacking his beliefs, and they had the nerve to cut him off and call him names! He was asked a question about Rehnquist's influence on the court and his legal legacy, and Dershowitz launched into a tirade of personal attacks.

His final paragraphs are:

All this, for refusing to put a deceptive gloss on a man who made his career undermining the rights and liberties of American citizens.

My mother would want me to remain silent, but I think my father would have wanted me to tell the truth. My father was right.

Using his own logic, I guess that makes Dershowitiz a male chauvinist pig. He was not asked to eulogize Rehnquist. He was asked to comment on his legal views and the effect of his time on the Supreme Court, not to deliver a diatribe against him.