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William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States, provides an insightful and fascinating account of the history of civil liberties during wartime and illuminates the cases where presidents have suspended the law in the name of national security. "A highly original account of the proper role of the Supreme Court, a role that makes most sense in times of war, but that has its attractions whenever the Court is embroiled in great social controversies." --The New Republic Abraham Lincoln, champion of freedom and the rights of man, suspended the writ of habeas corpus early in the Civil War--later in the war he also imposed limits upon freedom of speech and the press and demanded that political criminals be tried in military courts. During World War II, the government forced 100,000 U.S. residents of Japanese descent, including many citizens, into detainment camps. Through these and other incidents Chief Justice Rehnquist brilliantly probes the issues at stake in the balance between the national interest and personal freedoms. With All the Laws but One he significantly enlarges our understanding of how the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution during past periods of national crisis--and draws guidelines for how it should do so in the future.

In the annals of presidential elections, the hotly contested 1876 race between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden was in many ways as remarkable in its time as Bush versus Gore was in ours. Chief Justice William Rehnquist offers readers a colorful and peerlessly researched chronicle of the post—Civil War years, when the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant was marked by misjudgment and scandal, and Hayes, Republican governor of Ohio, vied with Tilden, a wealthy Democratic lawyer and successful corruption buster, to succeed Grant as America’s chief executive. The upshot was a very close popular vote (in favor of Tilden) that an irremediably deadlocked Congress was unable to resolve. In the pitched battle that ensued along party lines, the ultimate decision of who would be President rested with a commission that included five Supreme Court justices, as well as five congressional members from each party. With a firm understanding of the energies that motivated the era’s movers and shakers, and no shortage of insight into the processes by which epochal decisions are made, Chief Justice Rehnquist draws the reader intimately into a nineteenth-century event that offers valuable history lessons for us in the twenty-first.

Course outlines for the two-week class "The Supreme Court in the History of the United States," taught regularly by the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law.

The two acquittals by the Senate were important because they forestalled the use of impeachment solely for political purposes in this country. Chief Justice Rehnquist tells the stories. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR