17 Quotes by Mark Tushnet

When you put the memo together with his voting registration challenges and with his opposition to a local antidiscrimination ordinance in Phoenix, ... you get a picture of somebody for whom issues of racial justice and nondiscrimination were not a high priority.

When the history of the Supreme Court in the 20th century is written, there will be two great chief justices: Earl Warren and William Rehnquist. Both presided over courts that changed the law in a very dramatic way.

Sen. Specter's position is that Congress is creating the interest in ensuring that its powers are respected, which is injured when the court's rule against them, ... And so given that interest and injury, his argument is they have standing to intervene.

But there are some issues that have simply dropped out of contention,

I don't think his fundamental views changed over the roughly 30 years he was on the court.

He was working for the people of the United States.

I think toward the end of his tenure he was more sensitive to the compromises that you have to make if you're going to assemble a majority.

I think he'd look back and say his greatest disappointment was his inability to lead the court to overrule Roe V. Wade.

There's likely to be more informality in the memos, which will be more revealing of Roberts' cast of mind, ... There may also be advocacy of positions that were rejected.