INTRODUCTION
Justice, later Chief Justice, William H Rehnquist had a long and sometimes controversial career as a jurist. A book edited by Craig Bradley, The Rehnquist Legacy, is an excellent introduction to the still-growing literature. The author has a quibble with Professor Geoffrey R Stone’s article therein, ‘The Hustler: Justice Rehnquist and “The Freedom of Speech, or of the Press”’. Professor Stone does an elaborate, statistical analysis of Justice Rehnquist’s voting patterns and concludes that he was ‘no friend’ of the First Amendment, his jurisprudence ‘cannot be defended as principled, coherent, or even-handed’, and that he has left no ‘meaningful legacy’ in First Amendment jurisprudence. Professor Stone’s and other critics’ conclusions are moulded, as are the author’s, by what philosopher Richard M Weaver called one’s ‘metaphysical dream’ …
David Elder, The Law of Defamation, the First Amendment, and Justice William H Rehnquist’s Attempts to ‘Hold the Balance True’: A Framework for Assessing the Continuing Viability of New York Times v Sullivan’, 83 Louisiana Law Review 129 (2022). First Published online 15 December 2022.
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