WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 (UPI) -- Chief Justice William Rehnquist is dead at age 80 after a long battle with thyroid cancer.
Brushing aside retirement rumors over the past year, he worked at his job almost until the end.
His death gives President Bush the rare opportunity to fill two vacancies on the Supreme Court. Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced earlier this year she was stepping down as soon as her successor was confirmed.
Bush has nominated U.S. Circuit Judge John Roberts, and confirmation hearings are expected to begin in October.
The chief justice was a champion of federalism throughout his 33 years on the high court, believing that the federal government has assumed too much power from the states.
He was the last remaining member of the Supreme Court that handed down Roe v. Wade in 1973, one of two dissenters. Though a solid conservative on the high court, Rehnquist was never an ideologue and could vote with a moderate-liberal majority in some cases.
In 1971, President Richard Nixon nominated Rehnquist as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and Rehnquist joined the court in 1972. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan nominated him to be chief justice.
The Federalist Society, an influential and conservative judicial advocacy group, quotes a former Rehnquist clerk and assistant attorney general, Chuck Cooper, as saying,
"What we have seen over the past 15 years, under Chief Justice Rehnquist's leadership, is the court reviving the Founding Fathers' vision of limited government. And, in the process, enlarging the liberties of individuals in this country."
