Give biographer John A. Jenkins credit for directness: He doesn’t think very highly of his subject, the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist. It’s all there on the second page of the introduction, where Mr. Jenkins writes, “Rehnquist’s judicial philosophy was nihilistic at its core, disrespectful of precedent, and dismissive of … institutions that did not comport with his black-and-white view of the world.” The chief was “infatuated with his own genius” and in the 1950s held “views that were racist even by the standards of that era,” contends Mr. Jenkins, a longtime journalist and executive at CQ Press.

Though...