Rehnquist loved to sing, and he always led the caroling at the Court's annual Christmas party. (Every year or so, a group of law clerks would write the chief justice an earnest letter complaining that the party created an atmosphere of exclusion for non-Christians; Rehnquist, who pointedly never adopted the term "holiday party," would reply by invititing the young lawyers, in effect, to get over it.) In his early years on the Court, Rehnquist even sometimes wrote the sketches for the occassion. In 1975, as Jeffrey Rosen first reported, he wrote a song about his least-favorite Supreme Court opinion,
Miranda v. Arizona. Sung to the tune of Angels from the Realms of Glory," it went: Liberals from the realms of theory should adorn our highest bench / Though to crooks they're always chary / At police misdeeds they blench." The members of the chorus then fell to their knees and sang, "Save Miranda, save Miranda, save it from the Nixon Four." Nixon's nominees were Warrent Burger, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, and of course, Rehnquist himself.
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