THE SUPREME COURT How It Was, How It Is <i> by William H. Rehnquist (Quill/William Morrow: $10.95) </i>

Combining personal anecdote and juridical analysis, the chief justice of the United States presents details of his own background and discusses the history of the Supreme Court in language accessible to the literate layman.

Rehnquist does not discuss court cases since 1953 in which his current colleagues played a part. He writes instead of his own beginnings as law clerk to Robert H. Jackson, an associate justice of the Supreme Court, and of his first years at the Capital.

He presents a cogent precis of the Court from the time of John Marshall to the mid-20th Century and sketches the lives and personalities of some of the important justices of our time.

The most instructive section is the last, which provides a summary of the mechanics of the Supreme Court. Of the more than 5,000 appeals received per year, the justices choose which cases to bring to the full court; of these cases, each is debated for a full hour and an opinion conveying the outcome of the final vote is written--the drafting of which may take months.