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The impact of Chief Justice William Rehnquist—who served as a Supreme Court justice for a third of a century and headed the federal judiciary under four Presidents—cannot be understated. His dissenting opinion on Roe v. Wade, and his strongly stated positions on issues as various as freedom of the press, school prayer, and civil rights, would guarantee his memory on their own. Chiefly, though, William Rehnquist will always be remembered for his highly visible role in two of the most important and contentious political events of recent American history: the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton in 1999 and the Supreme Court’s decision that made George W. Bush the victor in the presidential election of 2000.

Despite his importance as a public figure, however, William Rehnquist scrupulously preserved his private life. And while his judicial opinions often inflamed passions and aroused both ire and praise, they were rarely personal. The underlying quirks, foibles, and eccentricities of the man were always under wraps.

Now, however, journalist Herman J. Obermayer has broken that silence in a memoir of their nineteen-year friendship that is both factually detailed and intensely moving, his own personal tribute to his dearest friend. In these pages, we meet for the first time William Rehnquist the man, in a portrait that can only serve to enhance the legacy of a Chief Justice who will be remembered in history as being among America’s most influential.



"Drawing on his long friendship with William Rehnquist (1924-2005), editor and publisher Herman Obermayer has written a personal memoir of the nation's 16th chief justice. Rehnquist could seem forbidding (cutting off attorneys arguing before the Supreme Court in mid-sentence when their allotted time was up) and a bit of a stuffed robe (he designed and wore a special version of the judicial garment, with gold arm stripes). But in a vignette recounted by Obermayer, Rehnquist sounds like a pretty good guy to pop a brew and watch a football game with. This is just what he and Obermayer were doing when the subject of TV coverage of arguments before the Court came up."
-Dennis Drabelle, The Washington Post


"The two older men approached each other gingerly at first, not sure that there was enough to sustain more than a casual, bantering relationship built on superficial talk about sports and politics.

But in a short time, they discovered they shared a deep love of poetry, music, and conservative political philosophy. One would eventually become a widower and find himself adrift, so the other invited him to spend Saturday evenings over dinner and a movie.

Out of those simple beginnings emerged a 19-year friendship between Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who died in 2005, and Herman Obermayer, a former New Jersey newspaper publisher and son of Leon J. Obermayer, a prominent Philadelphia lawyer, Republican and school board president who died in 1984.

At least two or three times a month, Herman Obermayer and Rehnquist bantered on the tennis court, guffawed at slapstick comedies, and traded political predictions. They talked history and music, shared gossip, and, following the 2000 election, fretted over the handling of the Florida recount.

In a memoir of the friendship . . . Obermayer adds new detail to the portrait of Rehnquist as a human being, and arguably a vulnerable one at that."
-Chris Mondics, Philadelphia Inquirer


"Drawing on his long friendship with William Rehnquist (1924-2005), editor and publisher Herman Obermayer has written a personal memoir of the nation's 16th chief justice. Rehnquist could seem forbidding (cutting off attorneys arguing before the Supreme Court in midsentence when their allotted time was up) and a bit of a stuffed robe (he designed and wore a special version of the judicial garment with gold arm stripes).

But in a vignette recounted by Obermayer, Rehnquist sounds like a pretty good guy to pop a brew and watch a football game with."
-Juliet Wittman, Denver Post


"It was four years ago that former Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the court's leading conservative, died of cancer at the age of 80. His obituaries focused on his efforts at achieving unity on court decisions and his role in the 1999 Clinton impeachment trial and 2000 Bush v. Gore election decision. But little was written about the man in the robe. And he probably would have liked that, being an extremely private man. Now comes a bid to change his image as a stodgy old codger from one of his secret friends, former Northern Virginia community newspaper editor Herman Obermayer. "He was a regular kind of guy, really fun to be around," says the author of Rehnquist: A Personal Portrait of the Distinguished Chief Justice of the United States. . . . At Rehnquist's death, news stories showed Obermayer 'how little the world knew about my friend. They made me aware of how fortunate I had been.'"
-Paul Bedard, "Washington Whispers,"U.S. New & World Report


“Rehnquist, by Herman J. Obermayer is the story of [Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist] in his later years, from the vantage point of a close and dear friend. It does not track Rehnquist’s judicial decisions, nor does the book tell the story of Nan Rehnquist, Rehnquist’s amazing wife of many years, who died in the early 1990s. Obermayer is an elderly journalist, not a lawyer, and his friendship with Rehnquist is later in their lives. The book instead is the story of a great friendship between an unlikely pair of elderly men -- the Lutheran Chief Justice and an observant Jewish journalist, who each found that their similarity of viewpoints and experiences ranging from tennis to service in World War II overwhelmed their differences. It is a very unusual book. While there are many shelves filled with dusty books by law professors analyzing the judicial decisions of the justices, there are relatively few “personal” view biographies by close friends of justices purely as men rather than as lawyers.

This book is a wonderful personal look at Rehnquist as a man, from his sheer intellectual brilliance to his foibles. It relates how Obermayer and Rehnquist would often carry on conversations with each other solely in memorized lines from assorted long-ago English poems, or old songs. Try that sometime, and you learn just how smart Bill Rehnquist was. . . In the end, the books teaches us that, in contrast to the massive hypocrisy of Washington (with global-warming prophets flying on large jets to huge mansions), Rehnquist’s life, like his judicial opinions, calls us back to better, simpler and more honest times in the Republic’s history.
-John E. O’Neill, Human Events”


"Obermayer's book gracefully intertwines many of the most significant themes, cases, and events surrounding Rehnquist's tenure on the Supreme Court with revealing glimpses of Rehnquist the man. The book, which is as much a portraiture of friendship as of a famous figure, offers no pretense of objectivity.

Drawing on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Obermayer describes his friendship with Rehnquist as marked by trust, warmth, and candid conversation, untainted by any possibility of career or financial benefit for either person, nourished by "symmetry," a shared matrix of values, ages, tastes in art, literature, friends, and amusements, and the freedom to walk away at any time, so that the continuation of the friendship was always entirely voluntary, without preconditions.

The book presents Rehnquist as an essentially modest and affable man, unpretentious in his habits, an almost "regular guy" who enjoyed a beer, a football game, poker, small bets on sports and politics, books, movies, and music. The portrait rings true, and helps explain Rehnquist's reputation for building strong collegial relationships while on the Supreme Court, relationships that bore no relationship to ideology."
-Rod Smolla, Richmond Times-Dispatch