Warren, Earl (1891–1974)

Earl Warren's term as chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1953 until 1969 overlapped a remarkable period of social change in the United States. The decisions of the Warren Court helped propel the civil rights movement, which experienced a rebirth during the three decades after World War II. The court and the movement worked in tandem to outlaw Jim Crow segregation, redefine the right to due process, and assert the power of the federal government over the peculiarities of state law. The wrathful opposition Warren inspired testified to the novelty of his court's approach to the law.

When he ascended to the chief justice seat in 1953, Warren seemed unlikely to lead an assault on the status quo. He was a pillar of the moderate Republican Party in California, which had dominated state politics since Hiram Johnson's governorship in the 1910s. As state party chairman, Warren led Frank Merriam's successful 1934 gubernatorial campaign against socialist Upton Sinclair. In 1942, Attorney General Warren laid the legal groundwork for the evacuation and internment of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast. Such actions would seem to cast Warren as a thoroughgoing advocate for the Anglo business establishment. But subtler observers noticed his modest origins as the son of a Norwegian immigrant who worked the night shift at a rail yard. As a student at the University of California at Berkeley, Warren supported left-leaning Senator Robert M. LaFollette's 1912 bid for the presidency. During the 1940s, Governor Warren displayed a commitment to equal opportunity by greatly expanding the size and accessibility of the University of California system, making it a model of public higher education.

Even so, Eisenhower picked Warren to be chief justice because Warren appeared ideologically moderate. Promising Warren the next vacancy on the court, Eisenhower was caught in a bind when Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson died suddenly in 1953. Eisenhower kept his word and nominated Earl Warren to be chief, a decision he soon regretted. In his first year on the bench, Warren persuaded his brethren to declare that racially segregated public schools were unconstitutional. The time was ripe for Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, but Warren's consensus-building skills produced a unanimous decision. Civil rights lawyers continued to find the Warren Court receptive to their petitions to desegregate buses, trains, parks, pools, golf courses, and marriage laws. The Warren Court also upheld civil rights protest tactics—such as sit-ins and peaceful marches—against local ordinances that classified such activities as trespass or disturbing the peace. Despite Warren's ability to break new legal ground on racial issues, critics found fault with the court's inability to make its rulings stick. Ten years after Brown, for example, only 2.3% of black children in southern states attended integrated schools. More recent critics have blamed Warren for enshrining desegregation as an ideal, which led to pitched battles over busing schemes and implied that black students could learn effectively only in the presence of white students.

While the Brown decision drew the ire of southern conservatives, Warren Court rulings on religion and privacy rights provoked a nationwide grassroots effort to impeach the chief. In a series of decisions, the high court struck down state laws requiring public school children to recite prayers. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), Warren's colleagues split over state prohibitions of the sale of contraceptive devices. The narrow Griswold majority claimed to find a right to privacy emanating from the language of certain amendments and found the privacy right violated by state bans on birth control. Using Griswold as a precedent, the post-Warren court legalized abortion in 1973. Conservative religious leaders felt that Warren was aiding and abetting the youth movement's challenge to puritanical sexual morality, and they began openly calling for the removal of the chief justice.

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