Earl Warren

• Born: 19 March 1891
• Birthplace: Los Angeles, California
• Died: 9 July 1974
• Best Known As: Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1953-69

Earl Warren was a Republican attorney and politician who served as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court during a period of expanding civil rights and civil liberties. Warren was raised in central California and earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. During his career he served as the district attorney for California's Alameda County (1925-39), California's attorney general (1939-43) and governor of California (1943-53) before running as a candidate for vice president in Thomas Dewey's 1948 bid to unseat Harry S. Truman. Warren sought the presidential nomination in 1952, but lost out to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Within a year of the election, President Eisenhower nominated Warren for the Supreme Court and Warren, who had no prior judicial experience, was sworn in as Chief Justice on 5 October 1953. During his tenure, the Supreme Court ruled on a number of cases involving civil rights, including 1954's Brown v. Board of Education and 1966's Miranda v. Arizona. The Warren Court ruled against segregated public schools, ensured the rights of suspected criminals and determined a constitutional "right of privacy." Some people celebrate the Warren Court for expanding rights and liberties, others condemn its "judicial activism" and accuse it of overreaching.

After the death of John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed a reluctant Warren to chair a commission investigating the assassination. Called the Warren Commission, the panel concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he killed Kennedy... Warren retired from the court in 1969.

(b. Los Angeles, 19 Mar. 1891; d. 9 July 1974) US; Governor of California 1942 – 53, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 1953 – 69 Educated at the University of California in Berkeley, Warren practised law and became district attorney. He served as Attorney-General of California 1939 – 42. In 1942 he was elected Governor of California and was re-elected in 1946 and 1950. He was a very successful Governor as California boomed during the Second World War and in post-war years, enabling state expenditure to increase while taxes were lowered. He promoted the development of higher education in California. Although a moderate Republican he was not particularly liberal on issues of civil liberties. In particular, he supported the removal of Japanese Americans during the Second World War from their homes to camps inland in California.

In 1948 he was selected by Thomas Dewey as vice-presidential candidate on the Republican ticket. Since President Truman appeared to be extremely unpopular and the Democratic party was badly split, Republican victory and his election as Vice-President of the United States seemed assured. Surprisingly, however, Truman won reelection and the Dewey-Warren Republican ticket went down to defeat.

In 1952 he supported Dwight D. Eisenhower for the Republican nomination for president in Eisenhower's contest with Robert Taft. His support for Eisenhower was crucial in Eisenhower's success in winning the Republican nomination. In 1953, when a vacancy occurred for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Eisenhower appointed him to the post.

He became celebrated as a reforming liberal Chief Justice. In 1954, the Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brown v. The Board of Education declared segregation in schools to be unconstitutional and the court ordered the integration of schools as rapidly as practical. Other liberal rulings concerned reappointment of state legislatures on the basis of one person one vote and protection of the rights of the accused in criminal cases. He believed that the court should interpret the constitution in a manner which reflected contemporary political realities rather than rigidly adhering to narrow legal precedents. As Chief Justice he exercised his political skills to achieve a consensus on the court for his legal philosophy.

(b. Los Angeles, Calif., 19 Mar. 1891; d. Washington, D.C., 9 July 1974; interred Arlington National Cemetery), chief justice, 1953–1969. Earl Warren presided as chief justice of the United States during one of the most turbulent times in our nation's history, during which the Court forged new doctrines regarding civil rights and civil liberties and the nature of the political system.

Warren was born in Los Angeles but grew up in Bakersfield, where his father worked as a railroad car repairman on the Southern Pacific Railroad. Bakersfield was then a rough, semi‐frontier town with more than its share of saloons and brothels. In his Memoirs (1977), Warren recalled that he witnessed “crime and vice of all kinds countenanced by a corrupt government” (p. 31), and that left an indelible impression on him. Summer work on the railroads also left him with knowledge about working people and their problems, as well as with the anti‐Asian racism then rampant on the west coast.

Warren attended the University of California at Berkeley and its law school, served a brief stint in the army during World War I, and then joined the district attorney's office in Alameda County for what he thought would be a brief stint. But he stayed for eighteen years, thirteen as district attorney. During that time, Warren proved an effective, tough prosecutor. But Warren also proved sensitive to the rights of the accused and personally fought to secure a public defender for indigents. A 1931 survey concluded that Earl Warren was the best district attorney in the United States, a fact often ignored by critics who claimed he had little trial experience and was “soft” on criminals.

In 1938 Warren successfully ran for attorney general of California, a post he held until 1942, when he was elected governor. In his one term as attorney general, Warren modernized the office but is remembered primarily for his role in demanding the evacuation of Japanese from the west coast. Throughout his life Warren maintained that at the time it seemed the right and necessary thing to do, and not until his memoirs were published posthumously did he acknowledge that it had been an error. (See World War II.)

A popular three‐term governor, Warren seemed headed for some national office. He ran as the Republican vice‐presidential candidate with Thomas Dewey in 1948 and played a key role in securing Dwight Eisenhower's nomination in 1952. For that, Eisenhower promised him the first appointment to the Supreme Court. Warren had, in fact, already accepted an offer to become the solicitor general when Chief Justice Fred Vinson unexpectedly died on 8 September 1953. Although Eisenhower seemed reluctant to name Warren to head the Court, the Californian reminded Attorney General Herbert Brownell of the earlier promise.

Although some people questioned whether Warren had either the ability or stature to be chief justice, his record shows a sure‐footed instinct in mastering the mechanics of the institution and in what Chief Justice William Howard Taft described as “massing the Court.” Unfamiliar with the Court's procedures, Warren asked Hugo Black, as the senior associate justice, to preside over the conferences until he could familiarize himself with his duties, a task that took him only a few weeks. His political experience also proved invaluable. Warren took over a Court deeply divided between the judicial activists, led by Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, and strong advocates of judicial restraint, led by Felix Frankfurter and Robert H. Jackson (see Judicial Activism; Judicial Self‐Restraint). Among the four Truman appointees, only Tom Clark displayed any mental acuity. Within a short time Warren had established himself as the Court's leader, a man who, according to Potter Stewart, “was an instinctive leader whom you respected and for whom you had affection” (Schwartz, p. 31).

Warren took the center chair at the opening of the October 1953 term with the Court confronting one of the most significant issues in its history, the constitutionality of racial segregation. Cases challenging school segregation had been argued the preceding term and then set for reargument with counsel asked to address specifically the applicability of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Within the Court the justices stood divided; even some of those who personally opposed racial segregation doubted if the Court had the authority under the Constitution to overturn it. Warren, moreover, had to trod carefully; he held only an interim appointment until Congress convened in January 1954; at that time the Senate Judiciary Committee, with powerful southern members, would have to confirm him.

In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Warren displayed all of the skills that would earn him the reputation as one of the great chief justices in the nation's history. He personally made up his mind on the issue quickly and announced in the first conference following the oral argument that one could not sustain racial segregation unless one assumed blacks to be inferior to whites, and he did not accept that premise. But he also recognized the political volatility of the issue, and that how the Court framed its opinion would be as important as what that decision held.

Throughout the winter and early spring of 1953–1954, Warren kept the issue open, letting the justices talk it out and review the options. Gradually all but one member of the Court, Stanley Reed, came to agree on reversing Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and confronted by that situation, Reed signed on. Warren then circulated drafts of his opinion that carefully distinguished between the principle that racial segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause and that remedies to this situation would be determined in the future (see Race and Racism). He wanted to give the southern states a chance to digest the fact that segregation would end, give moderates a chance to calm the inevitable passions that the decision would arouse, and then invite the southern states to join in framing an equitable decree to implement the decision.

The decision in Brown, announced on 17 May 1954, held racial segregation unconstitutional and triggered the massive civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. But aside from its immediate holding, Brown can also be seen as a major shift in the role of the Supreme Court in American life. For the previous century, the major issues before the Court had been economic, questions concerning the rights of property, and the Court, in defending property, had for the most part told Congress and the states that they could not take certain actions.

The chief issues before the Court since World War II have concerned individual rights, and in defending and expanding those rights, the Court has often told the states and Congress that they would have to change their practices, that they would have to act differently in the future than in the past. Rather than a barrier to legislation, the Court became an active partner in the governing process. This is in essence the “activism” of the Warren Court that upset so many conservatives, but Earl Warren at all times considered the defense and enforcement of individual rights a proper role for the courts; he never saw the role of the judiciary as passive, or as somehow inferior to that of the other branches.

Warren's opinion in Brown has been criticized for its lack of rigorous constitutional analysis, and this too is a reflection of the man. Warren never claimed to have a great legal mind, but he believed common sense, justice, and fairness to be more important than doctrinal hairsplitting. In Brown the key finding is based not on appeal to precedent or even to the history of the Fourteenth Amendment, but on the belief that racially segregated facilities were not equal, could never be equal, and had a detrimental effect on African‐American children. Warren based his conclusions on contemporary social perceptions rather than on doctrine, which also damned him in the eyes of critics.

As one of Warren's biographers has noted, Warren intended to fuse constitutional interpretation with a search for justice, finding in provisions such as the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses the basis for squaring the Constitution with the contemporary demand for increased individual rights. Brown thus previewed the Warren Court's “activism,” its commitment to social justice and protection of the individual against the power of the state. The case did not, of course, turn the Court around all at once; it would take several terms before the Warren Court emerged with its activist commitment to social justice.

Not all members of the Court agreed with this approach, and Felix Frankfurter energetically fought any departure from what he considered the strictures of judicial restraint. Although Frankfurter had supported Warren in the desegregation cases, he and the chief justice soon parted company. Frankfurter considered Warren a mere politician, who should be grateful for the instruction in the law and in the proper role of the Court that Frankfurter stood ready to provide. Warren, however, had been a successful district attorney, state attorney general, and governor, and although he tried to be polite to Frankfurter, the chief justice soon chafed at the incessant barrage of memos and words from his colleague, a situation that the pedantic Frankfurter exacerbated.

Two members of the Court, Black and Douglas, had already moved to the position that Warren would take, namely, that the Constitution gave the Court sufficient authority to remedy injustice. Although he would get on well with both of them, the man who became Warren's closest confidant and chief ally would be William J. Brennan, Jr., whom Eisenhower appointed to the Court in 1956. In many ways, Brennan served as Warren's theoretician and technician, framing the judicial arguments to carry out Warren's strategy. Frankfurter, who had welcomed his one‐time pupil onto the Court, was soon in despair at his seeming apostasy, especially since Brennan, unlike Warren, could parse a constitutional argument with the best. Before long Brennan and Warren began the practice of meeting together before the conference, to frame out judicial argument and political strategy.

The Warren‐led activists became dominant with the appointment of the open‐minded Potter Stewart in 1958 and the openly liberal Arthur Goldberg in 1962, and before long, the barriers that Frankfurter and the conservatives had erected began to tumble. A key set of cases involved the justiciability of challenges to state legislative apportionment. In 1946 Frankfurter had declared that a “political question” and warned the courts to stay out of the “political thicket.”

In 1962, with Brennan writing the majority opinion in Baker v. Carr, the Court held that it did have jurisdiction, and two years later Chief Justice Warren delivered the Court's opinion in a series of cases that, taken together, required a complete overhaul of the nation's state legislative apportionment schemes based on the criterion of one person, one vote (see Reapportionment Cases). In response to Justice John M. *Harlan's dissent that the Court ignored history and precedent, Warren made clear that the Constitution mandated democracy and justice. “Citizens, not history or economic interests cast votes,” he declared in Reynolds v. Sims (1964). “People, not land or trees or pastures vote” (p. 579).

This commitment to democratic procedures, to justice and to individual liberties, marks the core of Earl Warren's jurisprudence, and also its weakness. He believed that in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the founders had erected barriers against majoritarian rule to protect the individual, whether in the exercise of political rights or the expression of unpopular opinions or as a shield against vengeance in criminal prosecutions. The will of the majority expressed itself in the laws of the Congress and the actions of the Executive; the Court, in turn, had been assigned the critical role of ensuring that the elective branches did not ride roughshod over individual liberties. When Governor Orville Faubus of Arkansas challenged the Court's authority to bind the states to its interpretation of the Constitution, Warren massed the Court behind Brennan's opinion in Cooper v. Aaron (1958), one of the strongest statements in the Court's history affirming its role as the final arbiter of what the Constitution means.

Whether one looks at the Court's record in matters of free speech, separation of church and state, apportionment, racial discrimination, or criminal procedure, Warren and his Court essentially asked the same questions: Is this fair? Does this protect the individual, especially the one with unpopular views? Does this impose the power of the state where it does not belong? Warren was not antigovernment or anti‐law enforcement, but he believed that the Constitution prohibited the government from acting unfairly against the individual. This can be clearly seen in two cases involving criminal procedure. In 1963, to general approbation from state attorneys general, the Court extended the Sixth Amendment right to counsel to the states in the landmark decision of Gideon v. Wainwright. Three years later, in one of the most criticized of all the decisions during his tenure, Warren attempted to set up clear rules governing police procedures. His opinion in Miranda v. Arizona required that at minimum, a person accused of a crime would be informed of his or her rights (see Counsel, Right to). Warren recognized, and empirical studies have since confirmed, that the Miranda warnings do not hamper effective police work; they serve as a prophylactic to make sure both the state and the individual are treated fairly.

Warren also had no trouble supporting the activist bloc when it read bold new rights into the Constitution, such as in the landmark case of Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which proclaimed a right to privacy.

Warren predictably came under criticism from conservatives who opposed judicial activism and his broad interpretation of the Bill of Rights, but even some of his admirers questioned his judgment in 1963 when he accepted the chairmanship of the special commission to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy (see Extrajudicial Activities). The chief justice did not want to take the assignment, believing that extrajudicial assignments tended to undermine the work of the Court and violated separation of powers. But he found himself no match against Lyndon Johnson's powers of persuasion and the president's appeal to Warren's patriotism. Although Warren did not participate actively in the commission's work, he kept himself apprised of its progress, and took a hand in shaping its final report.

As several scholars have noted, it was not a happy experience for the chief justice, whose instincts for candor and justice collided with his recognition of the political implications of the report and his desire, for reasons similar to that in Brown, to have the report endorsed unanimously. The commission and its report have been under continuous criticism from one group or another ever since; while there can be little question that a man of Warren's integrity would not participate in a blatant coverup, evidence does suggest that even if the commission's ultimate findings are correct, it did not have access to important FBI and CIA files. Warren should have followed his initial instincts to turn the assignment down.

In June 1968, Earl Warren went to the White House to inform the president that he intended to retire, but left the date open until the confirmation of his successor. Johnson named Abe Fortas, whose views coincided closely with those of Warren, but the Republicans smelled victory in 1968, and determined to deny Johnson the chance to name the next chief justice. Then came revelations of alleged financial misconduct by Fortas, and in October Fortas asked Johnson to withdraw the nomination. Warren agreed to stay on until the next president, his old political foe, Richard M. Nixon, named his successor.

In his last term, however, Warren still had one more civics lesson to deliver. Warren's valedictory came on 16 June 1969 in Powell v. McCormack; the chief justice ruled that the House of Representatives had exceeded its authority in denying a seat to the flamboyant African‐American representative from Harlem, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Although a “textually demonstrable constitutional commitment” gave each house the power to judge its members' qualifications, Warren read this clause narrowly. “The Constitution leaves the House without authority,” he declared, “to exclude any person duly elected by his constituents, who meets all the requirements for membership expressly prescribed by the Constitution.” Any other rule, he held, would deprive the people of their right to elect their own representative (p. 522).

The Powell opinion, like that in the apportionment cases, reaffirmed Warren's faith in the democratic process; but it also, like the opinion he had helped to craft in Cooper, reasserted the Court's primacy in interpreting the Constitution. One week later, he stepped down after sixteen terms as chief justice. In his retirement, he worked on his memoirs (which tell very little about the Court years) and opposed the proposal to create a new intermediate appeals court to reduce the Supreme Court's jurisdiction, a proposal he believed aimed at minimizing the Court's ability to remedy injustices. He maintained a fairly active schedule until he began to suffer from congestive heart failure in early 1974, a condition from which he died on 9 July of that year.

In evaluating Warren, scholars are in general agreement that as a jurisprude he does not rank alongside Louis Brandeis, Black, or even Frankfurter. The chief justice's opinions were not always clear, and they rarely involved complex or sophisticated legal analysis. Warren's strengths, however, lay in his belief that the Constitution embodied certain natural rights that the Court had the power to articulate and that in doing so it was always under the obligation to protect individual liberties and to ensure justice.

Conservatives believed this an inappropriate philosophy and called for a restricted view of judicial activity. Yet the fact remains that Warren's ideas struck a responsive chord in the minds of many Americans. Shortly after Warren's retirement, Professor Joseph Bishop of Yale remarked that nothing would have made the Court's major decisions in such sensitive areas as race relations and criminal procedure “palatable to a large segment of the population, including a great many highly vocal politicians. … But in these areas it is my judgment … that (1) the Court was right, and (2) most people knew it was right” (M. I. Urofsky, A March of Liberty, 1987, p. 852). This sense of law as morality, often derided as an anachronism, showed, in Earl Warren's hands, that it could still be a powerful tool in forging public policy.

Bibliography

• Ed Cray, Chief Justice: A Biography of Earl Warren (1997).
• Jack Harrison Pollack, Earl Warren: The Judge Who Changed America (1979).
• Bernard Schwartz, Super Chief: Earl Warren and His Supreme Court—A Judicial Biography (1983).
• Earl Warren, The Memoirs of Earl Warren (1977).
• John D. Weaver, Warren: The Man, The Court, the Era (1967).
• G. Edward White, Earl Warren: A Public Life (1982)

— Melvin I. Urofsky

During the 16-year term of Earl Warren (1891-1974), a chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court decided a series of landmark cases regarding individual civil liberties and civil rights, particularly for minority groups.

Earl Warren's legal philosophy was opposed to the laissez-faire doctrine that had previously prevailed. His public life before he came to the Supreme Court had been pragmatic rather than activist. He had a natural flair for administration; his prosecutive experience gave him broad insights into the inequities of criminal justice, and he had a realistic understanding of the debilitating effects of racial segregation.

Warren, the son of a Norwegian immigrant, was born in Los Angeles, California, on March 19, 1891, and grew up in Bakersfield. He attended the School of Jurisprudence of the University of California at Berkeley, where he supported himself by working as a law clerk in a local office. Admitted to the bar in 1914, he had a meager practice in California before he enlisted in the Army in 1917.

In 1919 Warren became the clerk to the Judiciary Committee, a potent force in the California Legislature. He rose quickly to deputy city attorney of Oakland and then to deputy district attorney, chief deputy (1923), and district attorney (1925) of Alameda County. In 1925 he married Nina P. Meyers. During his 14 years as district attorney, he prosecuted thousands of criminal cases in an unrelenting fight against crime. Still, he said, "I never heard a jury bring in a verdict of guilty but what I felt sick in the pit of my stomach."

Attorney General

In 1939 Warren began campaigning for attorney general of California. In the midst of this, the tragedy of his life struck; his father was murdered as he sat by the window in the living room. Made more determined by this, Warren pledged to pursue strict law enforcement and to conduct a nonpartisan office. He was easily elected and soon became one of the best-known state attorneys general in the country. He was the resolute foe of the gambling syndicates as well as organized crime.

World War II was in progress, and these were tumultuous times. In 1941 Pearl Harbor catapulted Warren into controversy. California had long been the base of the aircraft industry and was now producing military planes and "liberty ships." At the outbreak of the war between the United States and Japan it was imperative that war matériel production be maintained. Public sentiment against Japanese people reached a frenzy, especially in California, which had over 100, 000 residents of Japanese extraction, two-thirds of whom were American citizens. Violence against these people began to break out, and accusations of disloyalty to the United States were made. Minisubs of the Japanese fleet were off the coast of California; bombs from balloons fell in the forests of Oregon and Washington. The West Coast became a virtual powder keg. Though history may treat the internment of some 112, 000 of these Japanese residents as a brutal violation of the Constitution, Warren made this decision in a desperate hour, and it was approved by the Supreme Court.

Governor of California

Warren was elected governor of California by an overwhelming majority in 1942 and was reelected in 1946 and 1950, serving until he was appointed chief justice of the United States in 1953. A progressive governor, he brought about many statutory reforms, including a unified judiciary, water control, prison modernization, and a new higher education system. In 1944 he was a darkhorse candidate for the presidency of the United States but failed to be nominated. In 1948 he was the vice-presidential running mate of Thomas E. Dewey on the Republican ticket. In a third try for national office, Warren headed the California delegation to the Republican convention in 1952, but Dwight Eisenhower was nominated. Warren became a strong supporter of Eisenhower in the subsequent campaign.

Chief Justice

When President Eisenhower appointed Warren to the Supreme Court, he said that he "wanted a man whose reputation for integrity, honesty, middle of the road philosophy, experience in government, experience in the law … will make a great Chief Justice." A great chief justice was long overdue. In its 163d year, the Supreme Court had accomplished little in establishing "equal justice under law" in the actual lives of most Americans. While some of the chief justices who preceded Warren doubtless aspired to give real meaning to the phrase, they could not quite bring it about. Though the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment had been written into the Constitution 85 years before Warren came to the bench, only portions of the Bill of Rights had been applied through that clause against action by individual states. Further, the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment had been recognized only in very limited areas. It had not been utilized in the grade schools, in public facilities, or in transportation.

In the field of criminal justice, though lip service had been given to individual rights, the fact is that in state cases poor persons were not furnished a transcript of the trial for appeal or given counsel at any stage of the litigation, save in capital cases. And while the right to vote is the sine qua non of a free society, America had for a century and a half permitted invidious discrimination in legislative reapportionment. Finally, the doctrine of lack of standing in taxpayers' suits had for years acted as an impenetrable barrier to the testing of the constitutionality of many acts of Congress.

Racial Desegregation

The 14th Amendment to the Federal Constitution, adopted in 1868, declared "all persons born … in the United States" to be citizens there of and guaranteed them, among other things, "the equal protection of the laws." However, African Americans struggled long and hard before they obtained these equal rights. It was not until 1954 that an 1896 constitutional rule of "separate but equal" treatment of the races was overturned in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. In his opinion for the Court, Warren declared that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" and concluded that "in the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal has no place."

The Brown decision triggered cases attacking segregated public facilities in transportation, libraries, parks, and so forth. Finally, its doctrine was extended in 1964 to places of public accommodation such as restaurants and hotels. The opinion also sparked a tempest of controversy that brought the dawn of a new day in America's economic, social, and political life.

Criminal Justice

Winston Churchill said that history judges the quality of a civilization by its system of criminal justice. If this be true, American civilization will owe much of its standing to Warren's leadership. Beginning with Griffin v. Illinois (1956), which required states to furnish an indigent criminal defendant with a copy of the evidence adduced at his trial, and extending to Miranda v. Arizona (1967), which afforded counsel to an indigent before interrogation, there was a continual wave of cases that gave substance to the guarantees afforded every individual in the Bill of Rights. These included Mapp v. Ohio, extending the protection against unreasonable search and seizure of the 4th Amendment to actions of the states; Gideon v. Wainwright, giving the 6th Amendment's guarantee of counsel that same coverage; Malloy v. Hogan, protecting the individual from self-incrimination by state action, and Berger v. New York, guarding the privacy of the individual from self-incrimination by state action; and Berger v. New York, guarding the privacy of the individual against eavesdropping by the state.

Like the segregation cases, these opinions aroused a storm of protest. The Chief Justice, as well as the Court, was accused of handcuffing the police, causing a crime wave, and coddling criminals. But the Court continued to follow the principle that when the rights of any individual or group are transgressed, the freedom of all is threatened. In short, it translated the ideals of the Bill of Rights into a strong shield for the individual against both the federal and state governments.

Political Process

As Warren said in Reynolds v. Sims, "The right to vote freely for the candidate of one's choice is of the essence of a democratic society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government." This right includes not only casting one's vote but also the right to have the vote counted at its full value. Nevertheless, prior to Baker v. Carr (1962), the ballots of rural voters had from 10 to 30 times the weight of those of city dwellers. Warren said in Reynolds v. Sims, "Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests … The weight of the citizen's vote cannot be made to depend on where he lives."

The impact of the voting cases was tremendous. Thus, there were some 25 cases subsequent to Baker. The political process in representative governments was completely transformed. In the long run the effect of these cases may be more important than those condemning segregation. The right to vote is the citizen's most powerful weapon in a democratic society. Because legislators listened to the voices of voters, the equality of those voices foced them to listen more attentively. One of the basic problems America faced in the city ghettoes included the result of the dominance of the rural voter. The new "one man, one vote" slogan changed the politics of every state in the Union. The decisions of the Chief Justice in segregation, criminal law, and apportionment cases culminated in a campaign to impeach him. He completely ignored it. When asked why he did not fight back, he replied, "A senator or governor may explain or defend his position publicly but not members of the Court. We can't be guided by what people think or say … by public appraisal. If we were we would be deciding cases on other than legal bases."

Taxpayer Suits

In his decision in Flast v. Cohen, which the Chief Justice wrote in 1968, he made it possible for citizens to bring "test suits" to the Court. This was one of his last opinions and one of the most important. Because the Court can pass only on legal controversies brought to it, the number of people able to litigate a question is important. Flast was an opening wedge in enlarging the ways and means by which any taxpayer can bring a suit to the Supreme Court. This contributed to opening the door of litigation, bringing forth the greatest surge of citizen participation that any democracy has attained.

Through self-discipline and public experience Warren learned never to permit the clamor of the public or the private pressures of individuals or groups to influence his decisions. Some critics called him a crying liberal, but he classified himself as a conservative-liberal. He had courage, a simple but strong faith in humanity, a practical and varied public experience, and a determination to improve the lot of the common man. As Chief Justice, he extended those horizons in five categories of the law, including racial desegregations, criminal justice, the political process, taxpayer standing to test legislative action, and the all-important field of judicial administration, which enables the courts to function efficiently.

Improved Court Administration

The job of the judge is twofold: first, to determine the rule of law and second, to apply the rule determined. Warren soon found that the legal profession was placing greater emphasis on substantive problems than on administration. As a consequence, court dockets had become congested, the trial bar had decreased in size, and criminal law had become degraded. For over 16 years Warren preached the dogma of improved court administration. In his final address to the American Law Institute on June 2, 1969, he summed up the problem in these words, "We have never come to grips with … court administration… . We should make bold plans to see that our courts are properly managed to do the job the public expects … We must do everything that modern institutions these days do in order to keep up with growth and changes in the times."

In fact, Warren made "bold plans" for the federal system and implemented them. The Judicial Conference of the United States was transformed from a club for chief judges of the courts of appeals into an effective general administrator for the federal courts. Its membership was increased to include trial court representation; the rule making power for federal courts was transferred to it from the Supreme Court; and a complete reorganization of the conferences was effected through a reduction of the number of committees. The administrative office of the federal courts was thus strengthened and reorganized. The Federal Judicial Center, Warren's brainchild, was authorized by Congress and organized into a potent force in judicial administration.

After Robert Kennedy's assassination, Warren feared that nothing could stop Richard M. Nixon from winning the 1968 presidential race. The two men had been bitter enemies since their days as California politicians nearly twenty years before. At age seventy-seven, the chief justice knew that he could not outlast a four-year conservative administration. To prevent Nixon from appointing his successor, Warren submitted his resignation to President Lyndon Johnson on June 11, 1968. He served until 1969. At the request of President Lyndon Johnson, Warren reluctantly headed the commission of inquiry into the circumstances of the assassination of President John Kennedy. He concluded that the killing was not part of a domestic or foreign conspiracy.

He was honorary chairman of the World Peace through Law Center. As chairman of the World Association of Judges from 1966 to 1969, he brought to the judicial forums of the world the message that he had written indelibly into American jurisprudence: only equal justice under law will bring peace, order, and stability to the world.

Warren died on July 9, 1974, in Washington, D.C.

Further Reading

The most significant papers of Warren's early career are collected in The Public Papers of Chief Justice Earl Warren, edited by Henry M. Christman (1959). The most complete biography is John D. Weaver, Warren: The Man, the Court, the Era (1967). A shorter work is Bill Severn, Mr. Chief Justice: Earl Warren (1968).

A superficial, laudatory account is Luther A. Huston, Pathway to Judgment: A Study of Earl Warren (1966). Biographical sketches and excellent photographs of Warren and other members of his Court are in John P. Frank, The Warren Court (1964). A critical analysis of the Warren Court and its work was edited by Richard H. Sayler and others, The Warren Court (1969). Other books on the Court include Alexander M. Bickel, Politics and the Warren Court (1965), and Archibald Cox, The Warren Court (1968). Clifford M. Lytle collected various statements from critics of the Warren Court in The Warren Court and His Critics (1968).

(click to enlarge)
Earl Warren, 1953. (credit: UPI)

(born March 19, 1891, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S. — died July 9, 1974, Washington, D.C.) U.S. jurist and politician. He graduated from law school at the University of California, then served as a county district attorney (1925 – 39), state attorney general (1939 – 43), and governor of the state for three terms (1943 – 53). He was criticized for interning Japanese citizens in camps during World War II. His only electoral defeat came in 1948, when he ran for vice president on the Republican ticket with Thomas Dewey. In 1953 Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Warren chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, a post he held until 1969. This was a period of sweeping changes in U.S. constitutional law. Under his leadership the court proved to be strongly liberal. Among Warren's notable opinions are those in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which held that segration in public education was unconstitutional; Reynolds v. Sims (1964), which declared the "one man, one vote" principle requiring state legislative reapportionment (1964); and Miranda v. Arizona (1966), which held that police must inform an arrestee of his right to remain silent and to have counsel present (appointed for him if he is indigent) and that a confession obtained in defiance of these requirements is inadmissible in court. After the assassination of Pres. John F. Kennedy, he chaired the Warren Commission.

For more information on Earl Warren, visit Britannica.com.

1953–69

• Born: Mar. 19, 1891, Los Angeles, Calif.
• Education: University of California at Berkeley, B.L., 1912, J.D., 1914
• Previous government service: deputy city attorney, Oakland, Calif., 1919–20; deputy assistant district attorney, Alameda County, Calif., 1920–23; chief deputy district attorney, Alameda County, 1923–25; district attorney, Alameda County, 1925–39; attorney general of California, 1939–43; governor of California, 1943–53
• Appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as a recess appointment Oct. 2, 1953; replaced Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, who died; nominated by Eisenhower Jan. 11, 1954
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Mar. 1, 1954, by a voice vote; retired June 23, 1969
• Died: July, 9. 1974, Washington, D.C.

Earl Warren, the son of immigrants from Norway, had a profound influence on constitutional law in the United States. As the 14th chief justice of the United States, he presided over a judicial revolution in the 1950s and 1960s.

Warren's public life before becoming chief justice gave little hint of what he would do on the Court. His career was conducted exclusively in California local and state politics from 1919 until 1953, when he joined the Supreme Court. During World War II, as attorney general and governor of California, Warren vigorously supported the federal order removing people of Japanese ancestry from the Pacific Coast of the United States and confining them in grim camps. He believed, without any evidence, that these people could threaten the national security of the United States during its war with Japan. At the end of his life, Warren expressed remorse: “I have since deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it, because it was not in keeping with our American concept of freedom and the rights of citizens."

Governor Warren moved to the Supreme Court through his participation in the Presidential election of 1952, when he helped Dwight D. Eisenhower win the Republican party nomination for President. After winning the Presidency, Eisenhower rewarded Earl Warren with the appointment to the office of chief justice.

Eisenhower later said this appointment was “the biggest damn-fool mistake I ever made.” Supreme Court scholars, however, have lauded Warren as one of the Court's all-time great justices. What did Warren do to disappoint Eisenhower and win the acclaim of scholars?

Earl Warren presided over the Supreme Court during a period of great controversy and change. Under his leadership, the Court stated new ideas on equal protection of the laws, the rights of persons accused of crime, freedom of expression, and representation in government.

Chief Justice Warren's greatest opinion was written in 1954, at the beginning of his 16-year term. In Brown v. Board of Education, Chief Justice Warren skillfully influenced the Court's unanimous decision to strike down state laws that required separate schools to be provided for black and white students. This decision overturned the 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson that had sanctioned racial segregation in public facilities.

Several decisions of the Warren Court greatly expanded the constitutional rights of those suspected or accused of crime. For example, state law enforcement officials were required to exclude illegally obtained evidence in criminal proceedings (Mapp v. Ohio, 1961), to guarantee the right to competent legal assistance for an accused person (Gideon v. Wainwright, 1963), and to inform people of their right against self-incrimination (Griffin v. California, 1965, and Miranda v. Arizona, 1966). These decisions overruled earlier Court rulings that had allowed the states to deviate from strict observance of the federal Bill of Rights. The Warren Court moved decisively to apply the rights of an accused person, as outlined in the federal Bill of Rights, to all of the states under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The Warren Court's most significant ruling on freedom of expression came in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964). The Court held that a public official may not sue and recover damages for libel against a person who has written untrue statements about him unless there was a complete and reckless disregard for truth. The Court's intention was to remove barriers to the free flow of information about government officials that is a necessary part of the democratic process.

Chief Justice Warren considered the Court's rulings on a series of “reapportionment cases” to be its most important contribution to constitutional law. These decisions, beginning with Baker v. Carr (1962) and culminating in Reynolds v. Sims (1964), established the principle of “one person, one vote” in state and federal elections. State governments were required to apportion, or divide, the state, for purposes of political representation, into districts based solely on population, with the districts as nearly equal in population as was possible. This decision ended the practice of creating districts to unfairly inflate representation in government of some groups at the expense of other groups.

Chief Justice Warren believed it was the Court's responsibility to protect the civil liberties and rights of individuals against overbearing majorities acting privately or through their representatives in government. Warren also believed that the Court should be an active partner with the other branches of government in achieving social justice and protection of the individual against the powers of the state.

See also Brown v. Board of Education; Incorporation doctrine; Judicial activism and judicial restraint; Miranda v. Arizona; Reynolds v. Sims

Sources

• Ed Cray, Chief Justice: A Biography of Earl Warren (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997). Lucas A. Powe, Jr., The Warren Court and American Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000). Bernard Schwartz, Superchief: Earl Warren and His Supreme Court (New York: New York University Press, 1983). G. Edward White, Earl Warren: A Public Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982)

(1891-1974), California governor and chief justice, U.S. Supreme Court. Warren, born and raised in California, was elected district attorney of Alameda County in 1925, California attorney general in 1938, and governor in 1942. In three terms as governor he reorganized the state government and secured major reform legislation--modernizing the state's hospital system, prisons, and highways, and expanding old-age and unemployment benefits. In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed him the fourteenth chief justice of the United States. He retired in 1969.

There have been two great creative periods in American public law. During the first, the Marshall Court laid down the foundations of the American system. During the second, the Warren era, the Court rewrote much of the corpus of constitutional law. Warren was the leader in his Court's work, actively exercising his authority to reach the results he favored. In terms of creative impact Warren's tenure can be compared only with that of Marshall.

As a successful chief executive, Warren developed leadership abilities that enabled him to guide his Court effectively. His fellow justices all stressed his forceful leadership, particularly at the conferences where cases are discussed and decided. Justice William O. Douglas ranked him with John Marshall and Charles Evans Hughes "as our three greatest Chief Justices." Those behind the "Impeach Earl Warren" movement were correct in considering him the prime mover in the Warren Court's jurisprudence.

Warren's leadership can best be seen in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision--the most important by his Court. When the justices first discussed the case under Warren's predecessor, they were sharply divided. But under Warren, they ruled unanimously that school segregation was unconstitutional. The unanimous decision was a direct result of Warren's efforts. This and other Warren Court decisions furthering racial equality were the catalyst for the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s and the civil rights laws passed by Congress, themselves upheld by the Warren Court.

Next in importance were the reapportionment decisions. The Court ruled that the "one-person, one-vote" principle controls in all legislative apportionments. The result has been an electoral reform shifting voting power from rural districts to urban and suburban areas.

In addition to racial and political equality, the Warren Court sought equality in criminal justice. The landmark here was Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), which required counsel for indigent defendants. Warren's emphasis on fairness in criminal proceedings also led to Mapp v. Ohio (1961), barring illegally seized evidence and Miranda v. Arizona (1966), requiring warnings to arrested persons of their right to counsel, including appointed counsel if they could not afford one.

Earlier Courts had stressed property rights. Under Warren the emphasis shifted to personal rights, placing them in a preferred constitutional position. This was particularly true of First Amendment rights. Protection was extended to civil rights demonstrators and criticism of public officials; the power to restrain publication on obscenity grounds was also limited. Moreover, the Court recognized new personal rights, notably a constitutional right of privacy.

Warren expressed disappointment that he had never become president, although he had actively sought the Republican nomination in 1948 and 1952. Yet, as chief justice, he was able to accomplish more than most presidents. He led his Court to what Justice Abe Fortas once termed "the most profound and pervasive revolution ever achieved by substantially peaceful means."

Bibliography:

Bernard Schwartz, Super Chief: Earl Warren and His Supreme Court--A Judicial Biography (1983).

Author:

Bernard Schwartz

See also Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka; Gideon v. Wainwright; Mapp v. Ohio; Miranda v. Arizona ; Supreme Court.

A political leader and judge of the twentieth century. Warren was governor of California before being named chief justice of the Supreme Court in 1953, and he served on the Court until 1969. His time as chief justice was marked by boldness in interpreting the Constitution; the “Warren Court” often brought the Constitution to the support of the disadvantaged. (See Brown versus Board of Education and Miranda decision). Warren also led a government commission investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (see Lee Harvey Oswald).

Earl Warren served as the fourteenth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1953 to 1969. A former prosecutor, state attorney general, and governor of California, Warren previously had not served as a judge. In spite of his lack of judicial experience, Warren led a constitutional revolution that reshaped U.S. law and society and granted the lower federal courts wide latitude in enforcing individual constitutional rights. Although criticized by conservatives for his judicial activism, Warren has also been hailed as one of the greatest chief justices in U.S. history.

Warren was born on March 19, 1891, in Los Angeles, California, but moved with his family to Bakersfield, California, as a young boy. The son of a railroad worker, Warren worked summers on railroad crews as a young man to earn money to attend college. He earned a bachelor's degree and a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley and was admitted to the California bar in 1914. After a brief period of service in the Army during World War I, Warren returned to northern California where he practiced law for a short time in San Francisco.

Warren joined the Alameda County district attorney's office in 1920 and in 1925 was elected district attorney. Reelected two times, Warren established a reputation as a tough but fair prosecutor. A liberal Republican, he was elected California attorney general in 1938. Though he helped modernize the office during his term as attorney general, Warren's record was tarnished by his actions during the early months of U.S. involvement in World War II.

In 1942 Warren was a key leader in demanding the removal of people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. At the time, Warren and others justified the removal of Japanese Americans on national security grounds, believing that California was vulnerable to Japanese spies and saboteurs. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 65 S. Ct. 193, 89 L. Ed. 194 (1944), upheld the removal. Thousands of Japanese Americans lost their property and businesses and were "relocated" to concentration camps for the duration of the war. Warren defended his actions throughout his public career, but in retirement he admitted the relocation was a mistake based on hysteria and unsubstantiated fears.

Warren was elected governor of California in 1942 and proved a popular political leader. He was reelected with Republican and Democratic party support in 1946 and 1950. Warren's only political defeat came in 1948, when he was the Republican vice-presidential candidate on the ticket headed by Thomas E. Dewey that lost to President Harry S. Truman. In 1952 he played a key role in securing the Republican presidential nomination for Dwight D. Eisenhower, who in return promised Warren an appointment to the Supreme Court when a vacancy occurred.

When Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson died unexpectedly in September 1953, Eisenhower appointed Warren as his successor. In his first term as chief justice, Warren confronted the issue of state-mandated racial segregation in public schools. The case, which the Court had heard the previous year but was unable to decide, came back for reargument. In May 1954 Warren wrote the opinion for a unanimous Court in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 (1954). Brown overruled the 1896 Supreme Court decision of Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 16 S. Ct. 1138, 41 L. Ed. 256, which had allowed racially segregated facilities on trains and by implication in public schools. Writing that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," Warren held that racial segregation in Kansas denied African Americans equal protection of the laws.

Brown unleashed a torrent of controversy and protest in the South and immediately established Warren's image as a liberal. Throughout the South, billboards appeared that read "Impeach Earl Warren." Nevertheless, in 1955 the Court ordered Kansas and other states with segregated schools to move with "all deliberate speed" to dismantle their dual school systems. The modern civil rights movement was founded in this decision, which radically altered the traditional legal position on racial discrimination. When comprehensive federal civil rights legislation was enacted in the 1960s, the Warren Court easily upheld the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C.A. §2000a et seq.) and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C.A. §1973 et seq.).

The Warren Court was marked by its strict scrutiny of legislation that directly abridged the exercise of fundamental rights or narrowed the number of people who might exercise them, and of legislation that discriminated against various suspect classes. The strict scrutiny standard of review shifted to the government the burden of proving a compelling state interest that could justify discriminatory legislation. On most occasions the government could not meet this burden. In addition, the Court "read into" the Fourteenth Amendment, applicable to the states, most of the provisions of the Bill of Rights, which until then had been applicable only to the federal government.

Warren himself believed that his most important contribution to the law came in the area of legislative reapportionment. Most state legislatures had not apportioned their seats since the early 1900s. The allocation of seats was based on geographic areas and favored rural districts with small populations over growing urban and suburban areas. Political change was almost impossible because rural-dominated legislatures prevented reapportionment. Until the 1960s the Supreme Court had refused to intervene, concluding that cases challenging apportionment were political questions beyond the Court's jurisdiction.

In Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 82 S. Ct. 691, 7 L. Ed. 2d 663 (1962), the Court held that itdid have jurisdiction, and two years later, in Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S. Ct. 1362, 12 L. Ed. 2d 506 (1964), Warren wrote the opinion that has come to be known as the one person, one vote decision. Reynolds and a series of cases that followed forced state legislatures to be apportioned equally on the basis of population rather than geographic areas. Warren noted that "citizens, not history or economic interests cast votes," and that "legislators represent people, not acres or trees." Reapportionment based on population resulted in a shift of political power away from sparsely populated rural areas to metropolitan areas.

Warren also reshaped U.S. criminal procedure, in the process drawing protest from law enforcement officials and those citizens who believed the Court was tipping the balance in favor of criminals. Many cases of this era limited police searches and seizures and the use of confessions and extended the right to counsel to poor persons accused of felonies.

In Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S. Ct. 792, 9 L. Ed. 2d 799 (1963), the Court held that the Sixth Amendment right to legal counsel encompassed state as well as federal criminal proceedings. Therefore, the state was required to appoint an attorney to represent an indigent person charged with a crime. In Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S. Ct. 1602, 16 L. Ed. 2d 694 (1966), the Court required what has come to be known as the Miranda warning: the police must inform arrested persons that they need not answer questions and that they may have an attorney present during questioning. Warren sought to ensure that suspects who are not sophisticated in law or who are not able to afford ready counsel are not disadvantaged. Nevertheless, rising crime convinced many citizens that the Court gave away too much of the government's authority in Miranda.

The Warren Court also recognized the constitutional right of privacy in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S. Ct. 1678, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510 (1965). Griswold struck down a Connecticut statute that prohibited the dissemination of birth control information. In declaring the right of privacy, the Court laid the groundwork for the post-Warren Court decision in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147 (1973), which gave women the right to have an abortion.

In 1963 President Lyndon B. Johnson persuaded Warren to head a commission investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Warren reluctantly agreed to the request but was uncomfortable participating in this extrajudicial activity. The 1964 Warren Commission report has remained controversial. Critics have attacked its conclusions that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin and that there was no conspiracy to kill the president.

Warren informed President Johnson in June 1968 of his intent to retire but left the date of his resignation open. When Republicans blocked Johnson's nomination of Justice Abe Fortas in the fall of 1968, Warren agreed to serve until the next president took office in 1969, leaving the bench in July 1969. President Richard M. Nixon appointed Warren E. Burger as Warren's successor.

Many commentators have praised Warren's tenure as chief justice, but critics have charged that his judicial activism was outside the proper role of the Court and that many of the decisions were based on his personal values rather than the Constitution or other legal sources. Both Chief Justice Burger and his successor, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, have eschewed Warren's approach, applying more conservative principles.

Warren died on July 9, 1974, in Washington, D.C.

Quotes:

"Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught hell for it."

"Liberty, not communism, is the most contagious force in the world."

"The sports page records people's accomplishments, the front page usually records nothing, but man's failures."

"I always turn to the sports page first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing, but man's failures."

"The fantastic advances in the field of electronic communication constitute a greater danger to the privacy of the individual."

"Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress, but they consider the things government does for others as socialism."

See more famous quotes by Earl Warren

For the swing saxophonist and occasional singer, see Earle Warren.

Earl Warren
14th Chief Justice of the United States
In office October 5, 1953 – June 23, 1969
Nominated by	Dwight D. Eisenhower
Preceded by	Fred M. Vinson
Succeeded by	Warren E. Burger
30th Governor of California
In office January 4, 1943 – October 5, 1953
Lieutenant	Frederick Houser (1943–1947) Goodwin Knight (1947–1953)
Preceded by	Culbert Olson
Succeeded by	Goodwin Knight
20th Attorney General of California
In office January 3, 1939 – January 4, 1943
Governor	Culbert Olson
Preceded by	Ulysses S. Webb
Succeeded by	Robert W. Kenny
Born	March 19, 1891(1891-03-19) Los Angeles, California
Died	July 9, 1974 (aged 83) Washington, D.C.
Spouse(s)	Nina Elisabeth Meyers
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley
Religion	Protestantism
Signature

Earl Warren (March 19, 1891 – July 9, 1974) was the 14th Chief Justice of the United States and is to date the only person elected Governor of California three times. Prior to holding these positions, Warren served as a district attorney for Alameda County, California and Attorney General of California.

His tenure as California governor and Chief Justice was marked by extreme contrast. As governor of California, Warren was very popular across party lines, so much so that in the 1946 gubernatorial election he won the nominations of the Democratic, Progressive, and Republican parties. His tenure as Chief Justice was as divisive as his governorship was unifying. Liberals generally hailed the landmark rulings issued by the Warren Court which affected, among other things, the legal status of racial segregation, civil rights, separation of church and state, and police arrest procedure in the United States. But conservatives decried the Court's rulings, particularly in areas affecting criminal proceedings. In the years that followed, the Warren Court became recognized as a high point in the use of judicial power in the effort to effect social progress in the United States. Warren himself became widely regarded as one of the most influential Supreme Court justices in the history of the United States and perhaps the single most important jurist of the 20th century.

In addition to the constitutional offices he held, Warren was also the vice-presidential nominee of the Republican Party in 1948, and chaired the Warren Commission, which was formed to investigate the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Warren was the last Chief Justice born in the 19th century.

Contents 1 Education, early career, and military service 2 Family 3 Attorney General of California 4 Governor of California 5 U.S. Supreme Court 5.1 Nomination and confirmation 5.2 The Warren Court 5.3 Warren Commission 6 Legacy 6.1 Death 6.2 Honors 7 Electoral history 8 Footnotes 9 See also 10 Further reading 11 External links

Education, early career, and military service

Earl Warren was born in Los Angeles, California, to Methias H. Warren, a Norwegian immigrant, and Crystal Hernlund, a Swedish immigrant. Methias Warren was a longtime employee of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Earl grew up in Bakersfield, California where he attended Washington Junior High and Kern County High School (now called Bakersfield High School). It was in Bakersfield that Warren's father was murdered during a robbery by an unknown killer. Warren went on to attend the University of California, Berkeley, both as an undergraduate (B.A. 1912) in Legal Studies and as a law student at Boalt Hall where he was a member of the The Gun Club secret society^[1]. He earned his LL.B. in 1914.^[2] While at Berkeley, Warren joined the Sigma Phi Society, a fraternal organization with which he maintained lifelong ties. Warren was admitted to the California bar in 1914.

Warren worked a year for the Associated Oil Co. in San Francisco and then joined a private law firm in Oakland named Robinson & Robinson. The younger partner, Bestor Robinson, whose father became a California Superior Court Justice, was very active in the Sierra Club and conservationism and was an avid rock climber. In August 1917, Warren enlisted in the U.S. Army for World War I service. Assigned to the 91st Division at Camp Lewis, Washington, 1st Lieutenant Earl Warren was discharged in 1918. He served as a clerk of the Judicial Committee for the 1919 Session of the California State Assembly (1919–1920), and as the deputy city attorney of Oakland (1920–25). At this time Warren came to the attention of powerful Republican Joseph R. Knowland, publisher of The Oakland Tribune. In 1925, Warren was appointed district attorney of Alameda County after the incumbent, Ezra Decoto, resigned to become Railroad Commissioner. Earl Warren was re-elected to three four-year terms. Serving Alameda County as D.A. (1925–1939) as a tough-on-crime district attorney and reformer who professionalized the DA's office, Warren had a reputation for high-handedness; however, none of his convictions were ever overturned on appeal.

Family

Warren married Swedish-born widow Nina Elisabeth Palmquist on October 4, 1925 and had six children. Mrs. Warren died in Washington, D.C. at age 100 on April 24, 1993. Warren is the father of Virginia Warren, who married veteran radio and television newsman and host of What's My Line?, John Charles Daly, on December 22, 1960. They had three children, two boys and a girl.

Attorney General of California

Nominated by the Democratic Party, the Progressive Party, and his own Republican Party,^[3] Warren was elected Attorney General of the State of California in 1938.^[2] Once elected he organized state law enforcement officials into regions and led a statewide anti-crime effort.^[3] One of his major initiatives was to crack down on gambling ships operating off the coast of Southern California.^[3] Following the United States entry into World War II after the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor, Warren organized the state's civilian defense program.^[3] As Attorney General, Warren is most remembered for his support of Japanese internment during the war, the compulsory removal of Japanese Americans to internment camps away from the West Coast of the United States.^[4][5] Throughout his lifetime, Warren maintained that this seemed to be the right decision at the time.^[5] He did, however, admit in his memoirs that it was a mistake.^[5]

Governor of California

Photo as Governor of California

Running as a Republican, Warren was elected Governor of California on November 3, 1942, defeating Democratic incumbent Culbert Olson. California law at the time allowed individuals to run in any primary election they chose; in 1946, attesting to his wide popularity, Warren managed the singular feat of winning the Republican, Democratic, and Progressive primary elections and thus ran virtually unopposed in the 1946 general election. He was elected to a third term (as a Republican) in 1950. He is the only governor of California to have been elected to three terms of office.

As with his predecessor Olson, Warren's governorship was marked by his support for the internment of Japanese and Americans of Japanese descent during World War II. It was also marked by laying the infrastructure to support a two-decade boom that lasted from the end of World War II until the mid-1960s. In particular, Warren and University of California President Robert Gordon Sproul presided over construction of a large public university system that provided education to two generations of Californians.

In 1946 Warren appointed William F. Knowland to the U.S. Senate. Democrats claimed it was political payback, as Knowland’s father Joseph R. Knowland and his newspaper The Oakland Tribune supported the political career of Warren. On June 14, 1947, Governor Earl Warren signed a law repealing school segregation statutes in the California Education Code after the California Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling banning the practice of school segregation [Mendez v. Westminster School District, 64 F.Supp. 544 (C.D. Cal. 1946), aff'd, 161 F.2d 774 (9th Cir. 1947) (en banc)]

Warren ran for Vice President of the United States in 1948 on a ticket with Thomas Dewey. They lost to Harry Truman and Alben Barkley.

U.S. Supreme Court

Earl Warren

Nomination and confirmation

In 1952, Warren stood as a "favorite son" candidate of California for the Republican nomination for President, but withdrew in support of Eisenhower. Warren was reported to have offered to support Eisenhower's campaign in return for an appointment to the Supreme Court at the first possible opportunity. In 1953, Warren was appointed Chief Justice of the United States by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who wanted a conservative justice and commented that "he represents the kind of political, economic, and social thinking that I believe we need on the Supreme Court.... He has a national name for integrity, uprightness, and courage that, again, I believe we need on the Court".^[6] Warren resigned from the governorship shortly afterwards, replaced by Lieutenant Governor Goodwin Knight.

Warren also provided crucial campaigning service to Eisenhower in California after Vice Presidential candidate Richard Nixon was weakened by controversy over an alleged "slush fund".

The Warren Court

Main article: Warren Court

Warren was a vastly more liberal justice than had been anticipated. Consequently, President Eisenhower is said to have remarked that nominating Warren for the Chief Justice seat was "the biggest damned-fool mistake I ever made."^[7] Warren was able to craft a long series of landmark decisions including:

• Brown v. Board of Education 347 U.S. 483 (1954), which banned the segregation of public schools;
• the "one man, one vote" cases of 1962–1964, which dramatically altered the relative power of rural regions in many states;
• Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), which held that the Sixth Amendment required that all indigent criminal defendants receive publicly-funded counsel. The law to that point requiring the assignment of free counsel only to indigent defendants in capital cases;
• Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), which required that certain rights of a person interrogated while in police custody be clearly explained, including the right to an attorney (often called the "Miranda warning").
• Loving v. Virginia, {388 U.S. 1} (1967), which overturned the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which had banned inter-racial marriage in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

After the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968, Warren announced that due to his advanced age, he would retire from the Court, "effective at [Johnson's] pleasure."^[8] Johnson wrote back that he would accept Warren's resignation upon finding a "qualified" successor.^[8] This prompted Senator Sam Ervin to ask whether Warren even planned to leave if a liberal justice was not confirmed as his replacement, and The Washington Post said that Warren should release a more definitive letter of resignation.^[8] Although Warren denied it, this was seen by observers as a preemptive move by Warren to keep Richard Nixon from naming his successor; he believed Nixon would win the presidency after Kennedy's death. Warren and Nixon had a tense relationship after Warren declined to endorse Nixon during his first campaign for Congress in 1946. This tension gave way to animosity starting in 1952 at the Republican Convention, where Warren was a candidate; Warren believed Nixon undermined his nomination.

President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Associate Justice Abe Fortas to succeed Warren, but after his confirmation hearing went badly, Fortas was forced to withdraw his nomination. As a result, Warren was forced to stay on as Chief Justice. Both he and Fortas returned to the court for the 1969 session as a result. Warren swore in Nixon as President. Nixon then nominated Warren E. Burger – a man Warren did not hold in high regard – to replace Earl Warren as Chief Justice.^[9]

"To conservatives, the Warren Court converted constitutional law into ordinary politics," according to Mark Tushnet in Constitutional Interpretation, Character and Experience.^[10] "The Warren Court justices saw their service on the Supreme Court as just another job on the national political scene."

Warren Commission

Main article: Warren Commission

At the direct request of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Warren headed what became known as the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The Commission eventually concluded that the assassination was the result of a single individual, Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone. The Commission's findings have long been controversial.^[11]

Legacy

Earl Warren had a profound impact on the Supreme Court and United States of America. As Chief Justice, his term of office was marked by numerous rulings on civil rights, separation of church and state, and police arrest procedure in the United States.

His critics found him a boring person. "Although Warren was an important and courageous figure and although he inspired passionate devotion among his followers...he was a dull man and a dull judge," wrote Dennis J. Hutchinson.^[12]

The first Impeach Earl Warren sign, posted in San Francisco in October of 1958

Warren retired from the Supreme Court in 1969. He was affectionately known by many as the "Superchief", although he became a lightning rod for controversy among conservatives: signs declaring "Impeach Earl Warren" could be seen around the country throughout the 1960s. The unsuccessful impeachment drive was a major focus of the John Birch Society.^[13]

As Chief Justice, he swore in Presidents Eisenhower (in 1957), Kennedy (in 1961), Johnson (in 1965) and Nixon (in 1969).

Death

Five and a half years after his retirement, Warren died in Washington, D.C., on July 9, 1974.^[14] His funeral was held at Washington National Cathedral and his body was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.^[15]

Honors

On December 5, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Warren into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts.^[16] The Earl Warren Bill of Rights Project is named in his honor. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1981. An extensive collection of Warren's papers, including case files from his Supreme Court service, is located at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Most of the collection is open for research.

Various things are named in his honor. In 1977, Fourth College, one of the six undergraduate colleges at the University of California, San Diego, was renamed Earl Warren College in his honor. The California State Building in San Francisco, a middle school in Solana Beach, California, high schools in San Antonio, Texas (Earl Warren High School) and Downey, California, and a building at the high school he attended (Bakersfield High School) are named for him, as are the showgrounds in Santa Barbara, California. The freeway portion of State Route 13 in Alameda County is the Warren Freeway.

Electoral history

Earl Warren electoral history
California Republican presidential primary, 1936:[17] Earl Warren – 350,917 (57.43%) Alf Landon – 260,170 (42.58%) 1936 Republican presidential primaries[18]: William Edgar Borah – 1,478,676 (44.48%) Alf Landon – 729,908 (21.96%) Frank Knox – 527,054 (15.85%) Earl Warren – 350,917 (10.56%) Stephen A. Day – 155,732 (4.69%) Warren Green – 44,518 (1.34%) Republican primary for Governor of California, 1942[19]: Earl Warren – 635,230 (94.23%) Nathan T. Porter – 15,604 (2.32%) William E. Riker – 10,004 (1.48%) Fred Dyster – 9,824 (1.46%) Culbert Olson (inc.) (write-in) – 3,504 (0.52%) Democratic primary for Governor of California, 1942[20]: Culbert Olson (inc.) – 513,244 (51.98%) Earl Warren – 404,778 (41.00%) Roy G. Owens – 50,780 (5.14%) Nathan T. Porter – 11,302 (1.15%) Alonzo J. Riggs – 7,231 (0.73%) California gubernatorial election, 1942[21]: Earl Warren (R) – 1,275,237 (57.07%) Culbert Olson (D) (inc.) – 932,995 (41.75%) California Republican presidential primary, 1944[22] Earl Warren – 594,439 (100.00%) 1944 Republican presidential primaries[23]: Douglas MacArthur – 662,127 (28.94%) Earl Warren – 594,439 (25.99%) John W. Bricker – 366,444 (16.02%) Thomas E. Dewey – 278,727 (12.18%) W. Chapman Revercomb – 91,602 (4.00%) Unpledged – 87,834 (3.84%) Harold Stassen – 67,508 (2.95%) Riley A. Bender – 37,575 (1.64%) Charles A. Christopherson – 33,497 (1.46%) Wendell Willkie – 27,097 (1.19%) Republican primary for Governor of California, 1946[24]: Earl Warren (inc.) – 774,302 (91.10%) Robert W. Kenny – 70,331 (8.27%) Democratic primary for Governor of California, 1946][25]: Earl Warren (inc.) – 593,180 (51.93%) Robert W. Kenny – 530,968 (46.49%) California gubernatorial election, 1946[26]: Earl Warren (R, D) (inc.) – 2,344,542 (91.64%) Henry R. Schmidt (Prohibition) – 180,579 (7.06%) Archie Brown (Communist) – 22,606 (0.88%) James Roosevelt (D) (write-in) – 3,210 (0.13%) 1948 Republican presidential primaries[27]: Earl Warren – 771,295 (26.99%) Harold Stassen – 627,321 (21.96%) Robert Taft – 464,741 (16.27%) Thomas E. Dewey – 330,799 (11.58%) Riley A. Bender – 324,029 (11.34%) Douglas MacArthur – 87,839 (3.07%) Leverett Saltonstall – 72,191 (2.53%) Herbert E. Hitchcock – 45,463 (1.59%) Edward Martin – 45,072 (1.58%) Unpledged – 28,854 (1.01%) Arthur H. Vandenberg – 18,924 (0.66%) Dwight D. Eisenhower – 5,014 (0.18%) Harry S. Truman – 4,907 (0.17%) Henry A. Wallace – 1,452 (0.05%) Joseph William Martin, Jr. – 974 (0.03%) Alfred E. Driscoll – 44 (0.00%) Others – 5,939 (0.21%) 1948 Republican National Convention (Presidential tally)[28] Thomas E. Dewey – 1,094 (60.74%) Robert Taft – 274 (15.21%) Harold Stassen – 157 (8.72%) Arthur H. Vandenberg – 62 (3.44%) Earl Warren – 59 (3.28%) Dwight H. Green – 56 (3.11%) Alfred E. Driscoll – 35 (1.94%) Raymond E. Baldwin – 19 (1.06%) Joseph William Martin, Jr. – 18 (1.00%) B. Carroll Reece – 15 (0.83%) Douglas MacArthur – 11 (0.61%) Everett Dirksen – 1 (0.06%) 1948 Republican National Convention (Vice Presidential tally)[29]: Earl Warren – 1,094 (100.00%) United States presidential election, 1948 Harry S. Truman/Alben W. Barkley (D) – 24,179,347 (49.6%) and 303 electoral votes (28 states carried) Thomas E. Dewey/Earl Warren (R) – 21,991,292 (45.1%) and 189 electoral votes (16 states carried) Strom Thurmond/Fielding L. Wright (Dixiecrat) – 1,175,930 (2.4%) and 39 electoral votes (4 states carried) Henry A. Wallace/Glen H. Taylor (Progressive) – 1,157,328 (2.4%) California gubernatorial election, 1950[30]: Earl Warren (R) (inc.) – 2,461,754 (64.85%) James Roosevelt (D) – 1,333,856 (35.14%) 1952 Republican presidential primaries[31]: Robert Taft – 2,794,736 (35.84%) Dwight D. Eisenhower – 2,050,708 (26.30%) Earl Warren – 1,349,036 (17.30%) Harold Stassen – 881,702 (11.31%) Thomas H. Werdel – 521,110 (6.68%) George T. Mickelson – 63,879 (0.82%) Douglas MacArthur – 44,209 (0.57%) Grant A. Ritter – 26,208 (0.34%) Edward C. Slettedahl – 22,712 (0.29%) Riley A. Bender – 22,321 (0.29%) Mary E. Kenny – 10,411 (0.13%) Wayne Morse – 7,105 (0.09%) Perry J. Stearns – 2,925 (0.04%) William R. Schneider – 580 (0.01%) 1952 Republican National Convention (1st ballot) Dwight D. Eisenhower – 595 Robert Taft – 500 Earl Warren – 81 Harold Stassen – 20 Douglas MacArthur – 10 1952 Republican National Convention (2nd ballot) Dwight D. Eisenhower – 845 Robert Taft – 280 Earl Warren – 77 Douglas MacArthur – 4

Footnotes

1. ^ [1]
2. ^ ^{a b} "Earl Warren". Timeline of the Justices. The Supreme Court Historical Society. http://www.supremecourthistory.org/02_history/subs_timeline/images_chiefs/014.html. Retrieved 2007-12-21. 
3. ^ ^{a b c d} "Earl Warren, 20th Attorney General". Office of the Attorney General of California. http://ag.ca.gov/ag/history/20warren.php. Retrieved 2007-12-21. 
4. ^ Wu, Frank H. (February 19, 2009). "FDR New Deal Legacy Intact, but Internment of Japanese-Americans Lives in Infamy Too". U.S. News & World Report. http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2009/02/19/fdr-new-deal-legacy-intact-but-internment-of-japanese-americans-lives-in-infamy-too.html. Retrieved 2009-08-15. 
5. ^ ^{a b c} "Brown v. Board of Education (1954): Landmark Case Biography Earl Warren (1891–1974)". http://www.landmarkcases.org/brown/warren.html. Retrieved 2007-12-21. 
6. ^ Personal and confidential To Milton Stover Eisenhower, 9 October 1953. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 460. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Accessed 12 October, 2005.
7. ^ Whitman (July 10, 1974). "For 16 Years, Warren Saw the Constitution as Protector of Rights and Equality", p. 24. New York Times.
8. ^ ^{a b c} Laura Kalman (1990). Abe Fortas. Yale University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=x-Fbl_xE1E0C. Retrieved 2008-10-20. 
9. ^ Jim Newton, Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made
10. ^ 72 B.U. Law Review 747, 759. (1992)
11. ^ Earl Warren was portrayed by real life New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison in JFK, the Oliver Stone film about the assassination and Garrison's investigation of it.
12. ^ in Hail to the Chief: Earl Warren and the Supreme Court, 81 Mich. L. Rev. 922, 930 (1983).
13. ^ Political Research Associates, "John Birch Society"
14. ^ "Earl Warren (1891-1974)". Earl Warren College. http://warren.ucsd.edu/aboutwarren/college_overview/earl_warren.php. Retrieved 2007-12-21. 
15. ^ Woodward, Bob; Scott Armstrong (2005). The Bretheren: Inside the Supreme Court. New York, New York: Siomn & Schustler. pp. 385. ISBN 0-7432-7402-4. 
16. ^ Warren inducted into California Hall of Fame, California Museum, Accessed 2007
17. ^ Our Campaigns – CA US President – R Primary Race – May 05, 1936
18. ^ Our Campaigns – US President – R Primaries Race – Feb 01, 1936
19. ^ Our Campaigns – CA Governor – R Primary Race – Aug 25, 1942
20. ^ Our Campaigns – CA Governor – D Primary Race – Aug 25, 1942
21. ^ Our Campaigns – CA Governor Race – Nov 03, 1942
22. ^ Our Campaigns – CA US President – R Primary Race – May 16, 1944
23. ^ Our Campaigns – US President – R Primaries Race – Feb 01, 1944
24. ^ Our Campaigns – CA – Governor – R Primary Race – Jun 05, 1946
25. ^ Our Campaigns – CA – Governor – D Primary Race – Jun 05, 1946
26. ^ Our Campaigns – CA Governor Race – Nov 05, 1946
27. ^ Our Campaigns – US President – R Primaries Race – Feb 01, 1948
28. ^ Our Campaigns – US President – R Convention Race – Jun 21, 1948
29. ^ Our Campaigns – US Vice President – R Convention Race – Jun 21, 1948
30. ^ Our Campaigns – CA Governor Race – Nov 07, 1950
31. ^ Our Campaigns – US President – R Primaries Race – Feb 01, 1952

See also

List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States List of United States Chief Justices by time in office

List of U.S. Supreme Court Justices by time in office Super Chief: The Life and Legacy of Earl Warren, a 1989 documentary film United States Supreme Court cases during the Warren Court

Further reading

• Abraham, Henry J., Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court. 3d. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). ISBN 0-19-506557-3.
• Belknap, Michael R. The Supreme Court under Earl Warren, 1953–1969 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2005) ISBN 1570035636
• Conmy, Peter T. (1961) The Beginnings of Oakland California
• Cray, Ed. Chief Justice: A Biography of Earl Warren (New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0684808529.
• Cushman, Clare, The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies,1789-1995 (2nd ed.) (Supreme Court Historical Society), (Congressional Quarterly Books, 2001) ISBN 1568021267; ISBN 9781568021263.
• Frank, John P., The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions (Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, editors) (Chelsea House Publishers, 1995) ISBN 0791013774, ISBN 978-0791013779.
• Hall, Kermit L., ed. The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. ISBN 0195058356; ISBN 9780195058352.
• Martin, Fenton S. and Goehlert, Robert U., The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography, (Congressional Quarterly Books, 1990). ISBN 0871875543.
• Melendy, H. Brett and Benjamin F. Gilbert The Governors of California: Peter H. Burnett to Edmund G. Brown (Georgetown, CA: Talisman Press, 1965)
• Newton, Jim. Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made (Riverhead Hardcover, 2006) ISBN 1594489289
• Orvis, Nathaniel O. (2008) "A History Project"
• Powe, Lucas A., Jr. The Warren Court and American politics (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000) ISBN 0674000951
• Schwartz, Bernard. Super Chief: Earl Warren and his Supreme Court (New York: New York University Press, 1983) ISBN 0814778259
• Urofsky, Melvin I., The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary (New York: Garland Publishing 1994). 590 pp. ISBN 0815311761; ISBN 978-0815311768.
• Warren, Earl. The Memoirs of Earl Warren (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977) ISBN 0385128351
• White, G. Edward. Earl Warren, a public life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982) ISBN 0195031210
• Woodward, Robert and Armstrong, Scott. The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court (1979). ISBN 9780380521838; ISBN 0380521830. ISBN 9780671241100; ISBN 0671241109; ISBN 0743274024; ISBN 9780743274029.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Earl Warren

• Earl Warren at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
• Transcript, Earl Warren Oral History Interview I, 9/21/71, by Joe B. Frantz, Internet Copy, LBJ Library. Accessed April 3, 2005.
• Earl Warren High School Transcripts, source courtesy Bakersfield High School
• More information on Earl Warren and his Masonic Career.
• Earl Warren's Eulogy for John F. Kennedy
• "California 1946," (Dec 21, 1945). A speech by Earl Warren from the Commonwealth Club of California Records at the Hoover Institution Archives.

Legal offices
Preceded by Ulysses S. Webb	California Attorney General 1939–1943	Succeeded by Robert W. Kenny
Preceded by Fred M. Vinson	Chief Justice of the United States October 5, 1953 – June 23, 1969	Succeeded by Warren E. Burger
Political offices
Preceded by Culbert Olson	Governor of California 1943–1953	Succeeded by Goodwin Knight
Party political offices
Preceded by John W. Bricker	Republican Party Vice Presidential nominees 1948	Succeeded by Richard Nixon

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Supreme Court of the United States

The Warren Court Chief Justice: Earl Warren (1953–1969) 1953–1954: H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | R.H. Jackson | H.H. Burton | T.C. Clark | S. Minton 1955–1956: H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | H.H. Burton | T.C. Clark | S. Minton | J.M. Harlan II 1956–1957: H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | H.H. Burton | T.C. Clark | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan 1957–1958: H. Black | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | H.H. Burton | T.C. Clark | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan | C.E. Whittaker 1958–1962: H. Black | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | T.C. Clark | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan | C.E. Whittaker | P. Stewart 1962–1965: H. Black | Wm. O. Douglas | T.C. Clark | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan | P. Stewart | B. White | A.J. Goldberg 1965–1967: H. Black | Wm. O. Douglas | T.C. Clark | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan | P. Stewart | B. White | A. Fortas 1967–1969: H. Black | Wm. O. Douglas | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan | P. Stewart | B. White | A. Fortas | T. Marshall

Persondata
NAME	Warren, Earl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	United States federal judge
DATE OF BIRTH	March 19, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH	Los Angeles, California
DATE OF DEATH	July 9, 1974
PLACE OF DEATH	Washington, D.C.

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