Elena Kagan's Papers: No 'Smoking Guns' For Practical, Liberal Lawyer

Andrew Cohen

Columnist

While clerking for Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson in 1952, the brilliant Stanford Law School graduate (and already dogmatic) William H. Rehnquist wrote and delivered to his boss a memo arguing against the integration of public schools. The memo from the earnest clerk came about during the Court's early deliberations over the school desegregation cases that we now know as Brown v. Board of Education. "I realize that it is an unpopular and un-humanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by my 'liberal' colleagues, but I think Plessy v. Ferguson (the Court's 1896 segregation precedent) was right and should be re-affirmed," Rehnquist wrote to Justice Jackson, who wisely ignored the advice.