The Nine [67]
The outcome had never been in doubt. Impeachment supporters won forty-five votes for the first count and fifty for the second, both well short of the sixty-seven they needed. (Arlen Specter, the crankily independent Republican from Pennsylvania, chose to vote the old Scottish verdict of “Not proven,” which was recorded as a no.)
With the senators seated solemnly before him, the chief justice announced, “It is, therefore, ordered and adjudged that the said William Jefferson Clinton be, and he is hereby, acquitted of the charges….”
Later, Rehnquist would sum up his performance in Clinton’s impeachment trial with an apt line from one of his favorite Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, Iolanthe: “I did nothing in particular, and I did it very well.”
Iolanthe also figured in a change in Rehnquist’s aesthetics. A few years before the impeachment trial, Rehnquist showed up for an argument at the Court in a new robe, one with four gold stripes on each sleeve. Evidently, he was copying the costume of the Lord Chancellor from a local production of the operetta. Since coming to the Court, Rehnquist had toned down the wardrobe that had so horrified Richard Nixon, but he had never before shown much interest in his appearance. “We thought it was a joke,” O’Connor said of the new robe. The stripes on the robe may have been a bit of whimsy, but his colleagues also knew better than to copy them. The most casual justice had become a chief who zealously guarded his perquisites. Occasionally, a hapless advocate would make the mistake of addressing him as “Justice Rehnquist”—and he would snap, “That’s Chief Justice!”
By this point, Rehnquist was devoting more of his energy to the mechanics of the Court—like the need to renovate the Court’s deteriorating building—than to the substance of its decisions. He was obsessed with getting through the Court’s business. One Sunday around the time of Clinton v. Jones, Washington was hit by a freak snowstorm that deposited twenty-one inches of snow. The city deals notoriously badly with even small amounts of snow, so the federal government was shut down the following day. But Rehnquist thought the Court should never concede to the elements. He ordered the Monday arguments to proceed and directed the Court staff to send jeeps to the homes of the justices.
The experience turned out to be a kind of Rorschach test for the justices’ characters. Carter Phillips, a prominent advocate before the Court who had to argue on Monday morning, lived near Scalia in the Virginia suburbs and asked if he could catch a lift with him. Scalia agreed and said Kennedy would be coming along as well. The roads were impassable, however, and Scalia had to walk almost a half mile in waist-deep snow just to get to the car. Sweating profusely, wearing a Russian hat and a short-sleeved shirt under his coat, Scalia was livid.
“This is insane,” he said. “What is the chief thinking? We’re risking our lives out here.”
But the justices all respected Rehnquist so much (while also fearing him a little) that no one wanted to be late. Worried that time was growing short, Scalia said to the driver, “By the power invested in me, I authorize you to run these lights!”
“Nino,” Kennedy cautioned, “we don’t have the power to run a red light.” They made it at 9:30, with a half hour to spare. “I even have time to read your brief now, Phillips,” Scalia cracked.
Another court car went to fetch Breyer and Ginsburg, who lived near each other—Breyer in Georgetown and Ginsburg at the tony Watergate complex. Elegant as always, if also slightly disengaged from the real world, Ginsburg chose to wear a straight skirt and high heels. Because of the snow on the ground and Ginsburg’s outfit, the driver, who usually worked in the clerk’s office, had to lift the tiny justice into the air and deposit her in the car. (Later, Ginsburg wrote the fellow