U.S. Supreme Court
Rehnquist Parody of Vinson Court Found in Another Justice’s Papers
Posted May 14, 2008, 06:59 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
A researcher has discovered a parody that pokes fun at Chief Justice Fred Vinson's leadership of the U.S. Supreme Court. It was written by a court clerk who later became chief justice of the same institution.
The author is the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Legal Times reports. The document is a parody of a song from the Gilbert and Sullivan musical The Mikado. It was found in the papers of the late Justice Robert Jackson, for whom Rehnquist once clerked.
Legal Times reports that “some of the droll references in the ditty are obscure, but they amounted to a fairly biting critique” of Vinson’s attempt to unite a fractured court.
Rehnquist wrote that Vinson “decreed with stern portent, that who thereafter did dissent, unless he had the chief's consent, would forthwith be beheaded."
Jackson scholar John Barrett of St. John's University law school found the song in papers at the Library of Congress.
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