European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - September 8, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 the stars and stripes monday september8,19b6 Tom Wicker Rehnquist should t be America s chief Justice of William ii. Rehnquist a Man of undoubted scholarly attainment has been a supreme court Justice since 1971. No one has produced hard enough Evi Dence of unsavoury past activities to prevent his confirmation As chief Justice. So when the Senate reconvenes this week the Only Good reason for senators to vote against Rehnquist will be his record on the court but that s reason enough. Rehnquist s votes and opinions in fact so disqualify him for the chief Justice s Seal that even the most conscientious senator need not Mony in this Case whether it s fair or defensible to penalize an otherwise qualified Man for the substance of his views. Ordinarily that s a difficult problem. A conscientious Liberal would not want to have voted against the nomination of the late distinguished John Marshall Harlan merely because he was a conservative. Nor would a conservative senator have been justified in opposing say. Ear Warren a Man of Broad views and great Legal and political experience Only because that senator expected Warren to he a Liberal chief Justice. Rehnquist poses a different problem. His record on the supreme court demonstrates not so much that he is a conservative in any traditional sense As that he is unsuited to be the highest official and overseer of a Federal judiciary the irreplaceable value of which in the words of Justice Lewis Powell lies in the Protection it has afforded the constitutional rights and Liber lies of individual citizens and minority groups against oppressive or discriminator government action Rehnquist disdains that Protection and that profoundly conservative View. Instead As his votes and opinions leave no doubt he has regularly consistently and often singularly voted to subordinate the rights of individual americans to the Power of the state. Perhaps equally important and disqualifying he has abandoned the Jeff cronian View thai the Constitution raises a Wall of separation Between Church and state asserting instead the novel doctrine that it Only prevents stale preference for one Church Over an other. These arc not differences of detail Over permissible methods of school desegregation or the admissibility of evidence or the interpretation of the Gratum Rudman act. In a recent article for the nation Herman Schwartz of the american University Law faculty de tails what these views have meant in actual cases Keh Nuisl believes that victims of deliberate discrimination who Are not members of a racial minority have no constitutional recourse As Long As the disc Riim James Reston Cone to think a it Justice a just i dont remember we stub