Mike Chu: Driving Justice Rehnquist

“Justice Rehnquist was presiding over [the federal judicial conference here], and they needed somebody to drive him around… So we were basically their Uber the entire time, and we took him to tennis and I still remember dropping him off at the little airport here... I said, Would you mind if we took a picture with you?... [T]he next week, I have this letter from the Supreme Court of the United States, Office of the Chief Justice, Chambers of the Chief Justice. And there it was. And he had a little note in there, it said, Mike, it was great, you know, thank you so much for all this. And he signed the picture. And I had it framed on my desk for years.” -- Mike Chu, Class of 1992, on driving Chief Justice Rehnquist around Williamsburg Watson, Wendy. “C.J. Awarded Fellowship.” The Advocate, vol. 22, no. 4, 1 November 1990, p.1. In 1990 Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist visited William & Mary Law School for three days as the first Carter O. Lowance Fellow in Law and Public Service. Michael Chu and fellow classmate Robert Bryant were responsible for driving Rehnquist and his wife around Williamsburg in between official engagements. Chu recalled hearing many stories while driving, including how Rehnquist would require each of his clerks to play him in tennis. Later, a colleague in Chu’s firm who clerked for Rehnquist confirmed that “everybody had to play tennis with him.” Listen to Mike Chu's oral history online.