2 Utahns who clerked for Rehnquist mourn him

Law clerks who served under the late Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist lost more than a former boss.

"It's very personal," said University of Utah President Michael Young, a clerk for Rehnquist during 1977 and 1978. "I just lost a very close friend and a mentor."

Young and Utah lawyer Stephen Sargent were in Washington Wednesday for Rehnquist's funeral at St. Matthew's Cathedral. Rehnquist died Saturday of thyroid cancer.

Both men remembered a man who liked to do his thinking on foot.

"I must have walked a thousand miles during the Bakke case," Young recalled. That was the 1978 affirmative action case Richard Bakke v. the University of California Davis Medical School.

Rehnquist made it a habit to walk around the courthouse with the clerk helping him with a specific case. The walks lasted 10 to 30 minutes, and Rehnquist, dressed in a suit and not his robe, was rarely recognized by visitors to the Supreme Court.

"He just looked like any other person," Sargent said.

Besides walks, Rehnquist enjoyed a game of tennis with his clerks. Every Thursday, Rehnquist and his three clerks — each served one year — drove to Haynes Point and spent an hour and a half on the hard court.

"He was quite spry," said Sargent, an attorney and resident of Fruit Heights.

Sargent, who clerked for Rehnquist from 1994-1995, helped carry Rehnquist's casket to a waiting hearse outside the Supreme Court. From there, the casket was taken to St. Matthew's, where funeral services also were held for President Kennedy in 1963.

Rehnquist, like other justices, spent more time meeting with his clerks than talking to other members of the court. Clerks write draft opinions on cases that are often debated with their bosses in private.

"He really liked the interplay, the give and take of ideas," Young said of Rehnquist. "We didn't always see eye-to-eye on every issue." And Rehnquist didn't always end where he started on some opinions, Young added.

It was a relationship Young described as more like senior partner/junior partner in a law firm rather than master and servant.

"I think he relied on his clerks because he was more confident in himself," Young said. "At the end of the day, he was the judge and I was the clerk."

Rehnquist was a friend to his clerks, inviting them over to his house once every year for a reunion of former clerks.