NONFICTION - June 21, 1992

GRAND INQUESTS: The Historic Impeachments of Justice Samuel Chase and President Andrew Johnson by William H. Rehnquist (William Morrow : $23; 303 pp.) . The title of this book by the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court isn’t strictly accurate, for only about half of “Grand Inquests” concerns the ultimately unsuccessful impeachments of Samuel Chase (in 1804) and Andrew Johnson (in 1868). The remainder is background, the relevance of which is at times obscure. Rehnquist obviously wants to put these events in historical context, but the result is a volume that often seems like a drawn-out civics textbook. When Rehnquist gets to the heart of these matters, however, “Grand Inquests” is effective, for Rehnquist’s factual descriptions are generally fair-minded and clear. Rehnquist’s overarching point is conventional: that the failure of these two impeachments, brought largely for political ends, “surely contributed as much to the maintenance of our tripartite federal system of government as any case decided by any court.”