The death last week of Chief Justice William Hubbs Rehnquist at 80 was a surprise but not a shock. He had been stricken with thyroid cancer last year and had been widely expected to resign over the summer. But "the Chief" pressed on with his work, hosted his annual basketball-and-croquet get-together with his former clerks in June, angrily denied he was resigning and watched his former Stanford Law School classmate Sandra Day O'Connor step down before him. Friends said Rehnquist had hoped to make it to the opening of the court on the first Monday in October.
Now about the only...