“The chief justice is the titular head of the third branch in the U.S. and abroad. You're looking for someone with the intellectual and leadership skills that can be a persuasive force in conference and the wider world.”
“There was some promise of a Rehnquist court revolution, and that hasn't happened. I think we were too quick to say that this was the conservative Republican answer to the Warren court.”
“In Burger's heyday they were deciding 150 cases a year -- so many that they were talking about creating an intermediate appellate court to handle some of the load. Rehnquist comes in, and with the platform of being chief justice, all that disappears, to the point where the Court is being criticized for taking too few cases.”
