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Rehnquist was born on October 1, 1924 and grew up in the Milwaukee suburb of Shorewood. His father was a sales manager and his mother worked for a small insurance company. His paternal grandparents immigrated from Sweden. After attending Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio in the fall of 1942, he joined the U.S. Army Air Forces, serving from March 1943 – 1946, mostly in the United States. After the war, Rehnquist attended Stanford University with the assistance of the G.I. Bill. In 1948, he received both a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts degree in political science. In 1950, he attended Harvard University, where he received a Master of Arts degree in government. He later returned to Stanford, and graduated from the Stanford Law School in the same class as Sandra Day O'Connor, with whom he would serve on the Supreme Court. The two briefly dated while at Stanford. Rehnquist graduated first in his law class.
Rehnquist went to Washington, D.C., to work as a law clerk for Justice Robert H. Jackson of the United States Supreme Court during the court's 1952–1953 term. While at that job he wrote a memorandum arguing against federal court-ordered school desegregation while the court was considering the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education. The memo was later brought up at both his 1971 Senate confirmation hearing for associate justice and his 1986 hearing for chief justice. Rehnquist testified that the memorandum reflected the views of Justice Jackson rather than his own. This was disputed by Elsie Douglas, long-time secretary of Justice Jackson, who said, during Rehnquist's 1986 hearings, that his allegation was "a smear of a great man, for whom I served as secretary for many years. Justice Jackson did not ask law clerks to express his views." Other records in the papers of Justices William O. Douglas and Felix Frankfurter indicate that Jackson voted for Brown in 1954 only after changing his mind. While a member of the court, Rehnquist followed and upheld the court's decision in Brown.
Rehnquist practiced law in Phoenux from 1953 to 1969, working for the firm that represented the national presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater in 1964. Rehnquist was active in the Republican Party and served as a legal advisor to Goldwater's campaign. Years later, during the 1971 hearing for associate justice and later during the 1986 Senate hearings on his chief justice nomination, Democratic senators alleged Rehnquist's participation in Operation Eagle Eye, a Republican attempt to discourage minority voters in Arizona elections. Rehnquist denied the charges, and his denial was supported by Vincent Maggiore, then chairman of the Phoenix-area Democratic Party.
When President Richard Nixon was elected in 1968, Rehnquist returned to work in Washington. He served as Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legal Counsel, from 1969 to 1971. In this role, he served as the chief lawyer to Attorney General John Mitchell. President Nixon mistakenly referred to him as "Renchburg" in several of the tapes of his Oval Office conversations. Rehnquist was mentioned for many years as a possibility for the source known as Deep Throat during the Watergate scandal.
In fall of 1971, Nixon received the resignations of two Supreme Court justices, Hugo Black and John Marshall Harlan II. After compiling an initial list of possible appointees that failed to pass the scrutiny of Chief Justice Burger and the American Bar Association, Nixon considered Rehnquist for one of the slots. Nixon nominated Rehnquist to replace Harlan and after being confirmed by the Senate by a 68–26 vote on December 10, 1971, Rehnquist took his seat as an associate justice on January 7, 1972.
Once on the court, Rehnquist established himself as the most conservative of Nixon's appointees. He took a narrow view of the Fourteenth Amendment (equal protection under the law) and an expansive view of state power. According to one contemporary legal analyst, "Rehnquist almost always voted with the prosecution in criminal cases, with business in antitrust cases, with employers in labor cases, and with the government in speech cases." He was often a lone dissenter in cases early on. During the Burger Court's deliberations in Roe v. Wade, Rehnquist expressed the view that court's jurisdiction does not apply over abortion. He voted against the expansion of school desegregation plans and the establishment of legalized abortions. He held the view that capital punishment is constitutionally permissible and supported the view that the Fourth Amendment permitted a warrantless search incidental to a valid arrest. In Nixon v. Administrator of General Services (1977), Rehnquist dissented in a decision upholding the constitutionality of an act that gave a federal agency administrator certain authority over former President Nixon's presidential papers and tape recordings, seeing this as "a clear violation of the constitutional principle of separation of powers".
Rehnquist enjoyed warm personal relations with his colleagues, even with ideological opposites. This was so despite his reluctance to compromise, as the most frequent sole dissenter during the Burger years, garnering the nickname "the Lone Ranger".
When Chief Justice Warren Burger retired in 1986, President Ronald Reagan nominated Rehnquist to fill the position. The nomination favorably received by his colleagues on the Court, including those who disagreed with him ideologically. Justice Thurgood Marshall would later call him "a great chief justice". During confirmation hearings, Senator Edward Kennedy challenged Rehnquist on his ownership of property that had a restrictive covenant against sale to Jews. Despite this and other controversies, the Senate confirmed his appointment by a 65–33 vote, and he assumed the office on September 26. Rehnquist's seat as an associate justice was filled by Antonin Scalia.
In 1999, Rehnquist became the second chief justice (after Salmon P. Chase) to preside over a presidential impeachment trial, during the proceedings against President Bill Clinton. In 2000, Rehnquist wrote a concurring opinion in Bush v. Gore, the case that effectively ended the presidential election controversy in Florida. He concurred with four other justices in that case that the Equal Protection Clause barred a manual recount of the votes as ordered by the Florida Supreme Court.
In his capacity as chief justice, Rehnquist administered the Oath of Office to the Presidents George H. W. Bush in 1989, Bill Clinton in 1993 and 1997, and George W. Bush in 2001 and 2005. Warren Burger had alienated his colleagues with his overbearing manner. Rehnquist, in sharp contrast, was liked his fellow justices with his easygoing, humorous, and unpretentious personality. He gained a reputation for scrupulous fairness in assigning opinions. He successfully lobbied Congress in 1988 to give the Court control of its own docket, cutting back on mandatory appeals. Rehnquist added four yellow stripes to the sleeves of his robe in 1995. He was a lifelong fan of Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and after appreciating the Lord Chancellor's costume in a community theater production of Iolanthe he appeared in court with the same striped sleeves.
Rehnquist continued to oppose the Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. In 1992, that decision survived by a 5–4 vote, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which sought to overturn Roe v. wade. He asserted his belief "that Roe was wrongly decided, and that it can and should be overruled consistently with our traditional approach to stare decisis in constitutional cases".
Legal commentator Jeffrey Rosen summarized Rehnquist's leadership on the court in these terms:
"With exceptional efficiency and amiability he led a Court that put the brakes on some of the excesses of the Earl Warren era while keeping pace with the sentiments of a majority of the country—generally siding with economic conservatives and against cultural conservatives. As for judicial temperament, he was far more devoted to preserving tradition and majority rule than the generation of fire-breathing conservatives who followed him. And his administration of the Court was brilliantly if quietly effective, making him one of the most impressive chief justices of the past hundred years."
After Rehnquist's death in 2005, a Freedom of Information Act request disclosed that, for a period, Rehnquist had been addicted to Placidyl, a drug widely prescribed for insomnia. Placidyl can be addictive, and it was not until he was hospitalized that doctors learned of the depth of his dependency. He was prescribed Placidyl by Dr. Freeman Cary, a physician at the U.S. Capitol, for insomnia and back pain from 1972 through 1981 in doses exceeding the recommended limits. On December 27, 1981, Rehnquist entered George Washington University Hospital for treatment of back pain and dependency on Placidyl. He underwent a month-long detoxification program. While hospitalized, he had typical withdrawal symptoms, including hallucinations and paranoia. One doctor reported that Rehnquist thought he heard voices outside his hospital room plotting against him.
On October 26, 2004, the Supreme Court press office announced that Rehnquist had been diagnosed with anaplastic thyroid cancer. In the summer of 2004, Rehnquist traveled to England to teach a constitutional law class at Tulane University Law School's program abroad. After several months out of the public eye, Rehnquist administered the oath of office to President George W. Bush at his second inauguration on January 20, 2005, despite doubts over whether his health would permit him to do this. He used a cane, walked very slowly, and left immediately after the oath was administered. He missed 44 oral arguments before the Court in late 2004 and early 2005, but appeared on the bench again on March 21, 2005.
On July 1, 2005, Sandra Day O'Connor announced her impending retirement from her position of associate justice, after consulting with Rehnquist and learning that he intended to remain on the Court. But his chair would soon become vacant. Rehnquist died at his Arlington, Virginia, home on September 3, 2005, just four weeks before his 81st birthday. Rehnquist was the first member of the Supreme Court to die in office since Justice Robert H. Jackson in 1954 and the first chief justice to die in office since Fred M. Vinson in 1953. Eight of his former law clerks, including Judge John Roberts, his eventual successor, served as his pallbearers. Rehnquist was eulogized by President George W. Bush and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, as well as by members of his family.
Rehnquist's death, just over two months after O'Connor announced her retirement, left two vacancies to be filled by President George W. Bush. On September 5, 2005, Bush withdrew the nomination of Judge John Roberts of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to replace O'Connor as associate justice, and instead nominated him to replace Rehnquist as chief justice. Roberts was confirmed by the U.S. Senate and sworn in as the new chief justice on September 29, 2005. Roberts had clerked for Rehnquist in 1980–1981. O'Connor continued to serve on the Supreme Court until the confirmation and swearing in of Samuel Alito in January 2006.