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Name:
Earl Warren
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Dates:
Born: March 19, 1891 in Los Angeles, California
Died: July 9, 1974
Chief Justice: October 1953 - June 1969
Biography:
Earl Warren (1891-1974) was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at a time when the
United States was experiencing tremendous social and political upheaval. As a
consequence, he presided over a court which was faced with a wide array of
important and divisive issues and he lead the Court to reach decisions which
expanded the scope and nature of civil rights for all Americans.
Right from the very beginning of his tenure Warren faced the incredibly problematic question of the constitutionality of racial segregation in public schools. Working with a Court divided between judicial activists and supporters of strict judicial restraint, Warren had to find a way to reach a decision which would be regarded as valid and final. The Court was divided on this matter and Warren himself had to be careful lest the Senate treat this decision as an excuse not to confirm him the following year.
Although Warren felt that the conclusion that segregation could not stand, he had to find a way to frame the final decision in a manner which would garner the support of most of the justices and the American public - contrary to the ideals held by many, Supreme Court decisions do have to consider political ramifications. Through extensive discussions over the course of several months, Warren was actually able to get the Court to come to a unanimous decision and, on May 17, 1954, the decision in Brown v. Board of Education was released under a storm of both support and protest.
The Brown decision is a reflection of the type of justice Warren was - for good and for ill. The decision was primarily about civil rights, marking a break from the previous decades during which Supreme Court decisions were mostly about economic and property issues. The decision did not rely upon past precedent or sophisticated legal reasoning - for Warren, justice was more about common sense and fairness than doctrinal fine print.
Critics hated him for this while supporters hailed the changes because Warren was committed to justice first and, upon that basis, worked to find a basis for that in the text of the Constitution. This is exactly the sort of judicial activism which has been instrumental in the expansion of civil liberties, but which judicial and social conservatives have decried as the destruction of the Constitution itself.
A bit less controversial, but perhaps even more sweeping in the implications for American politics, were the decisions in the Reappaortionment Cases. Today Americans are accustomed to the idea that political districts are created based upon population numbers and that voters are supposed to have equal weight when it comes to voting for elected officials - but that was not always the case.
For a long time, those living in rural areas had votes which weighed more people living in urban centers because the same number of politicians were being elected by fewer voters. In a series of decisions through the early 1960s the Supreme Court put an end to this, requiring that the drawing of political district boundaries be done with fairness in mind. Although political incumbents complained, their resistance collapsed quickly because the voters did not object.
Thus developed the "Warren Court", though Warren was very fortunate that William J. Brennan, Jr. was appointed to the Court by President Eisenhower in 1956. Brennan agreed with Warren in principle, but he was better than Warren when it came to framing those principles in legal and constitutional terms. Thus, Warren was able to furnish the moral authority for a decision while Brennan provided the legal reasoning necessary to make that decision more appealing to others who were uncomfortable with the activist turn which the Court was taking.
Also Known As: none
Alternate Spellings: none
Common Misspellings: none
Related Resources:
What are Political and Legal Philosophy
The Philosophy of Politics and the Philosophy of Law are often studied separately, but they are presented here jointly because they both come back to the same thing: the study of force. Politics is the study of political force in the general community, while jurisprudence is the study of how laws can and should be used to achieve political and social goals.What is Philosophy?
What is philosophy? Is there any point in studying philosophy, or is it a useless subject? What are the different branches of philosophy - what's the difference between aestheitcs and ethics? What's the difference between metaphysics and epistemology?
