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Normally, the Supreme Court of the United States makes narrow rulings. Those rulings apply to the case before the court and to similar cases. The Warren Court made extremely broad rulings. Its rulings applied to a wide area. It required a number of laws to be changed.

A big part of the Warren Court's problem came in its approach. In its abortion ruling, if it had simply ruled in the one case, instead of proclaimed a principle of law, it would have accomplished exactly the same thing. The same is true of the school prayer issue.

The current Supreme Court has ruled on State Wide Elections. Gradually each state is coming into compliance with the ruling. The ruling was on Florida. It did not pronounce a principle of law, but the ruling became the law of the land.

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The Warren Court promoted individual liberties and civil rights against the majoritarian desire to maintain the status quo. That made a lot of people uncomfortable and angry, and helped polarize public opinion in a way that lead to open ideological conflicts (controvery).

The primary controversy involved the popular belief that the Warren Court practiced judicial activism, or used their power to legislate radical, new social policies from the bench, in many of their civil rights rulings. This is typically seen as overstepping the judiciary's constitutional authority and infringing on Congress' legislative powers, a frequent accusation leveled against a progressive Court (conservatives also practice judicial activism, they just don't complain about it).

While that perspective may be valid in some respects, it's also legitimate to analyze the Warren Court's decisions in terms of correcting earlier, improper precedents supporting populist and political ideology that applied the Bill of Rights in a manner benefiting some people while penalizing others.

For example, Brown v. Board of Education, (1954), one of the Court's earlier civil rights decisions, overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson, (1896). Racial segregation statutes can be interpreted as violating African-Americans' (and other others') rights under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. Under those circumstances, correcting earlier, self-serving and biased constitutional interpretations allowing States to pass unconstitutional Jim Crow laws can be seen as an appropriate use of judicial power, while the earlier court decisions may be seen as activist insofar as they ignored the language and intent of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Similarly, ensuring Bill of Rights protections for the criminally accused applies equally to both rich and poor seems a more appropriate constitutional interpretation than one that favors a wealthy class over an impoverished class, as was the case when states denied court-appointed attorneys to the criminally accused who couldn't afford them (Gideon v. Wainwright, (1963)). Upholding Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses hardly seems activist under those circumstances.

[Note: The abortion ruling discussed above, Roe v. Wade,(1973), was a decision of the Burger Court.]

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