Earl Warren

Category : Law
Type : MGE
Profile : 1/3 - Investigating / Martyr
Definition : Split - Small (17)
Incarnation Cross : RAX The Vessel of Love 1

Biography

Earl Warren (March 19, 1891 – July 9, 1974) was an American jurist and politician who served as the 14th Chief Justice of the United States (1953–1969) and the 30th Governor of California.

He is best known for the decisions of the Warren Court, which ended school segregation and transformed many areas of American law, especially regarding the rights of the accused, ending public-school-sponsored prayer, and requiring "one-man-one vote" rules of apportionment. He made the Court a power center on a more even base with Congress and the presidency especially through four landmark decisions: Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), Reynolds v. Sims (1964), and Miranda v. Arizona (1966).

Warren is one of only two people to be elected Governor of California three times, the other being Jerry Brown. Before holding these positions, he was a district attorney for Alameda County, California, and Attorney General of California.

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.

Alongside that of John Marshall, Warren's tenure as Chief Justice is often seen as a high point of the power of the American judicial branch.

Education, early career, and military service

Earl Warren was born in Los Angeles, California, on March 19, 1891, to Methias H. Warren, a Norwegian immigrant whose original family name was Varren, and Crystal (Hernlund), a Swedish immigrant. Methias Warren was a longtime employee of the Southern Pacific Railroad. After the father was blacklisted for joining in a strike, the family moved to Bakersfield, California, in 1894, where the father worked in a railroad repair yard, and the son had summer jobs in railroading.

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 graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, (B.A. 1912) in Legal Studies, and Boalt Hall, LL.B. in 1914. He was a member of The Gun Club secret society, and the Sigma Phi Society, a fraternity with which he maintained lifelong ties. As an undergraduate, Warren also played clarinet in the Cal Band. Warren maintained a lifelong friendship with fellow Cal student and future University of California president, Robert Gordon Sproul. In 1948, at the Republican National Convention, Sproul would nominate Warren for Vice President. Warren was admitted to the California bar in 1914. He was strongly influenced by Hiram Johnson and other leaders of the Progressive Era to oppose corruption and promote democracy.

Warren worked a year for Associated Oil Company in San Francisco, then joined Robinson & Robinson, a law firm in Oakland. 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. Warren was re-elected to three four-year terms. Warren vigorously investigated allegations that a deputy sheriff was taking bribes in connection with street-paving arrangements. He was a tough-on-crime district attorney (1925–1939) who professionalized the DA's office. Warren cracked down on bootlegging and had a reputation for high-handedness, but none of his convictions were overturned on appeal. On the other hand, the Warren Court later declared unconstitutional some of the standard techniques he and other DAs used in the 1920s, such as coerced confessions and wiretapping.

Warren soon gained a statewide reputation as a tough, no-nonsense district attorney who fought corruption in government; in a 1931 survey, voters listed him as the best district attorney in the country. He ran his office in a nonpartisan manner and strongly supported the autonomy of law enforcement agencies. But he also believed that police and prosecutors had to act fairly, and much of what would later lie at the heart of the Warren Court's revolution in criminal justice can be traced back to his days as an active prosecuting attorney.

Family and social life

Warren married Swedish-born widow Nina Elisabeth Palmquist Meyers on October 4, 1925, and had six children. Mrs. Warren died in Washington, at age 100 on April 24, 1993. Warren is the father of Virginia Warren; she married veteran radio and television personality John Charles Daly, on December 22, 1960.

Warren was very active after 1919 in such groups as the American Legion, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and the Masons. Each one introduced Warren to new friends and political connections. He rose through the ranks in the Masons culminating in his election in 1935 as the grand master of the Freemasons for the state of California. Biographer Jim Newton says that Warren, "thrived in the Masons because he shared their ideals, but those ideals also helped shape him, nurturing his commitment to service, deepening his conviction that society's problems were best addressed by small groups of enlightened, well-meaning citizens. Those ideals knitted together Warren's Progressivism, his Republicanism, and his Masonry."

Attorney General of California

In 1938, Warren won the primaries in all major parties, thanks to a system called "cross filing," and was elected without serious opposition. Once elected, he organized state law enforcement officials into regions and led a statewide anti-crime effort. One of his major initiatives was to crack down on gambling ships operating off the coast of Southern California.

Japanese-American internment

As Attorney General, Warren is most remembered for being the moving force behind Japanese internment during the war: the compulsory removal of people of Japanese descent to inland internment camps out of fear that they might sabotage military bases on the coast. Following the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Warren organized the state's civilian defense program, warning in January 1942 that, "The Japanese situation as it exists in this state today may well be the Achilles heel of the entire civilian defense effort." He later said he:

"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...Whenever I thought of the innocent little children who were torn from home, school friends, and congenial surroundings, I was conscience-stricken...t was wrong to react so impulsively, without positive evidence of disloyalty"

—The Memoirs of Earl Warren (1977)

Governor of California

Running as a Republican, Warren was elected Governor of California on November 3, 1942, defeating incumbent Culbert Olson, a liberal Democrat. Thanks to cross-filing, he won all the 1946 primaries and was nominated as a candidate by both the Republican and Democratic parties, the only California governor to have done so. He was re-elected with over 90% of the vote against minor candidates. He was elected to a third term (as a Republican) in 1950 becoming the first person elected governor of California three times. Warren is the only person who has been sent to office in three consecutive California gubernatorial elections. An amendment passed in 1990 sets a limit of two terms for governor. (In 2010, Jerry Brown became the second person to be elected three times, in 1974, 1978, and 2010. As he served before the amendment was passed, he was not prohibited from serving another term.)

As governor, Warren modernized the office of governor, and state government generally. Like most progressives, Warren believed in efficiency and planning. During World War II, he aggressively pursued postwar economic planning. Fearing another postwar decline that would rival the depression years, Governor Earl Warren initiated public works projects similar to those of the New Deal to capitalize on wartime tax surpluses and provide jobs for returning veterans. Warren also built up the state's higher education system based on the University of California and its vast network of small universities and community colleges. For example, his support of the Collier-Burns Act in 1947 raised gasoline taxes that funded a massive program of freeway construction. Unlike states where tolls or bonds funded highway construction, California's gasoline taxes were earmarked for building the system. Warren's support for the bill was crucial because his status as a popular governor strengthened his views, in contrast with opposition from trucking, oil, and gas lobbyists. The Collier-Burns Act helped influence passage of the Federal-Aid Highway Act in 1956, setting a pattern for national highway construction.

Warren ran for Vice President of the United States in 1948 on the Republican ticket with Thomas E. Dewey, his gubernatorial counterpart from the state of New York. Heavily favored to win, they lost in a stunning upset to the incumbent Democratic President Harry S. Truman and his VP running mate Alben W. Barkley.

U.S. Supreme Court

Appointed to Supreme Court

In 1952, Warren stood as a "favorite son" candidate of California for the Republican nomination for President, hoping to be a power broker in a convention that might be deadlocked. But Warren had to head off a revolt by Senator Richard Nixon, who supported General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower and Nixon were elected, and the bad blood between Warren and Nixon was apparent. Eisenhower offered, and Warren accepted, the post of solicitor general, with the promise of a seat on the Supreme Court. But before it was announced, Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson died suddenly in September 1953 and Eisenhower picked Warren to replace him as Chief Justice of the United States. The president wanted what he felt was an experienced jurist who could appeal to liberals in the party as well as law-and-order conservatives, noting privately that Warren "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". In the next few years, Warren led the Court in a series of liberal decisions that revolutionized the role of the Court. Eisenhower is often said to have remarked that his appointment was "the biggest fool mistake I ever made." Eisenhower biographer Jean Edward Smith countered this perception by stating, "The problem is that Eisenhower never said that. I have no evidence that he ever made such a statement." Eisenhower gave Warren a recess appointment that began on October 1, 1953. It was made permanent when the Senate acted on March 1, 1954. No serious opposition had appeared and he was confirmed by unanimous voice vote.

As of 2013, Warren was the last Supreme Court justice to have served as governor of a U.S. state, the last justice to have been elected to statewide elected office, and the last serving politician to be elevated to the Supreme Court.

As Chief Justice, Warren swore in President Dwight D Eisenhower in his second inauguration in 1957 and his successor John F Kennedy in 1961. However, Warren did not swear in Kennedy's successor Lyndon B Johnson when he first became President, because Warren was not immediately available at the time of Kennedy's assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Warren would eventually swear in Johnson at his inauguration in 1965, and his one-time rival Nixon in 1969.

The Warren Court

Warren took his seat October 5, 1953, on a recess appointment; the Senate confirmed him on March 1, 1954. Despite his lack of judicial experience, his years in the Alameda County district attorney's office and as state attorney general gave him far more knowledge of the law in practice than most other members of the Court had. Warren's greatest asset, what made him in the eyes of many of his admirers "Super Chief," was his political skill in manipulating the other justices. Over the years his ability to lead the Court, to forge majorities in support of major decisions, and to inspire liberal forces around the nation, outweighed his intellectual weaknesses. Warren realized his weakness and asked the senior associate justice, Hugo L. Black, to preside over conferences until he became accustomed to the drill. A quick study, Warren soon was in fact, as well as in name, the Court's chief justice.

All the justices had been appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt or Truman, and all were committed New Deal liberals. They disagreed about the role that the courts should play in achieving liberal goals. The Court was split between two warring factions. Felix Frankfurter and Robert H. Jackson led one faction, which insisted upon judicial self-restraint and insisted courts should defer to the policymaking prerogatives of the White House and Congress. Hugo Black and William O. Douglas led the opposing faction; they agreed the court should defer to Congress in matters of economic policy, but felt the judicial agenda had been transformed from questions of property rights to those of individual liberties, and in this area, courts should play a more activist role. Warren's belief that the judiciary must seek to do justice placed him with the activists, although he did not have a solid majority until after Frankfurter's retirement in 1962.

Constitutional historian Melvin I. Urofsky concludes that "Scholars agree that as a judge, Warren does not rank with Louis Brandeis, Black, or Brennan in terms of jurisprudence. His opinions were not always clearly written, and his legal logic was often muddled." His strength lay in his public gravitas, his leadership skills and in his firm belief that the Constitution guaranteed natural rights and that the Court had a unique role in protecting those rights.

Political conservatives attacked his rulings as inappropriate and have called for courts to be deferential to the elected political branches. Political liberals sometimes argued that the Warren Court went too far in some areas, but insist that most of its controversial decisions struck a responsive chord in the nation and have become embedded in the law.

Decisions

Warren was a more liberal justice than anyone had anticipated. Warren was able to craft a long series of landmark decisions because he built a winning coalition. When Frankfurter retired in 1962 and President John F. Kennedy named labor lawyer Arthur Goldberg to replace him, Warren finally had the fifth liberal vote for his majority. William J. Brennan, Jr., a liberal Democrat appointed by Eisenhower in 1956, was the intellectual leader of the activist faction that included Black and Douglas. Brennan complemented Warren's political skills with the strong legal skills Warren lacked. Warren and Brennan met before the regular conferences to plan out their strategy.

Brown (1954)

Brown v. Board of Education 347 U.S. 483 (1954) banned the segregation of public schools. The very first case put Warren's leadership skills to an extraordinary test. The NAACP had been waging a systematic legal fight against the "separate but equal" doctrine enunciated in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and finally had challenged Plessy in a series of five related cases, which had been argued before the Court in the spring of 1953. However the justices had been unable to decide the issue and ordered a reargument of the case in fall 1953, with special attention to whether the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause prohibited the operation of separate public schools by the states for whites and blacks.

While all but one justice personally rejected segregation, the self-restraint faction questioned whether the Constitution gave the Court the power to order its end, especially since the Court, in several cases decided after Plessy, had upheld the doctrine of "separate but equal" as constitutional. The activist faction believed the Fourteenth Amendment did give the necessary authority and were pushing to go ahead. Warren, who held only a recess appointment, held his tongue until the Senate, dominated by southerners, confirmed his appointment. Warren told his colleagues after oral argument that he believed racial segregation violated the Constitution and that only if one considered African Americans inferior to whites could the practice be upheld. But he did not push for a vote. Instead, he talked with the justices and encouraged them to talk with each other as he sought a common ground on which all could stand. Finally he had eight votes, and the last holdout, Stanley Reed of Kentucky, agreed to join the rest. Warren drafted the basic opinion in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and kept circulating and revising it until he had an opinion endorsed by all the members of the Court.

The unanimity Warren achieved helped speed the drive to desegregate public schools, which mostly came about under President Richard Nixon. Throughout his years as Chief, Warren succeeded in keeping all decisions concerning segregation unanimous. Brown applied to schools, but soon the Court enlarged the concept to other state actions, striking down racial classification in many areas. Congress ratified the process in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Warren did compromise by agreeing to Frankfurter's demand that the Court go slowly in implementing desegregation; Warren used Frankfurter's suggestion that a 1955 decision (Brown II) include the phrase "all deliberate speed."

The Brown decision of 1954 marked, in dramatic fashion, the radical shift in the Court's—and the nation's—priorities from issues of property rights to civil liberties. Under Warren the courts became an active partner in governing the nation, although still not coequal. Warren never saw the courts as a backward-looking branch of government.

The Brown decision was a powerful moral statement clad in a weak constitutional analysis; Warren was never a legal scholar on a par with Frankfurter or a great advocate of particular doctrines, as was Black. Instead, he believed that in all branches of government common sense, decency, and elemental justice were decisive, not stare decisis, tradition or the text of the Constitution. He wanted results. He never felt that doctrine alone should be allowed to deprive people of justice. He felt racial segregation was simply wrong, and Brown, whatever its doctrinal defects, remains a landmark decision primarily because of Warren's interpretation of the equal protection clause to mean that children should not be shunted to a separate world reserved for minorities.

Reapportionment

The "one man, one vote" cases (Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims) of 1962–1964 had the effect of ending the over-representation of rural areas in state legislatures, as well as the under-representation of suburbs. Central cities—which had long been under-represented—were now losing population to the suburbs and were not greatly affected.

Warren's priority on fairness shaped other major decisions. In 1962, over the strong objections of Frankfurter, the Court agreed that questions regarding malapportionment in state legislatures were not political issues, and thus were not outside the Court's purview. For years, underpopulated rural areas had deprived metropolitan centers of equal representation in state legislatures. In Warren's California, Los Angeles County had only one state senator. Cities had long since passed their peak, and now it was the middle class suburbs that were underrepresented. Frankfurter insisted that the Court should avoid this "political thicket" and warned that the Court would never be able to find a clear formula to guide lower courts in the rash of lawsuits sure to follow. But Douglas found such a formula: "one man, one vote."

In the key apportionment case Reynolds v. Sims (1964) Warren delivered a civics lesson: "To the extent that a citizen's right to vote is debased, he is that much less a citizen," Warren declared. "The weight of a citizen's vote cannot be made to depend on where he lives. This is the clear and strong command of our Constitution's Equal Protection Clause." Unlike the desegregation cases, in this instance, the Court ordered immediate action, and despite loud outcries from rural legislators, Congress failed to reach the two-thirds needed pass a constitutional amendment. The states complied, reapportioned their legislatures quickly and with minimal troubles. Numerous commentators have concluded reapportionment was the Warren Court's great "success" story.

Due process and rights of defendants (1963–66)

In Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963) the Court held that the Sixth Amendment required that all indigent criminal defendants receive publicly funded counsel (Florida law, consistent with then-existing Supreme Court precedent reflected in the case of Powell v. Alabama, required the assignment of free counsel to indigent defendants only in capital cases); Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966) 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").

While most Americans eventually agreed that the Court's desegregation and apportionment decisions were fair and right, disagreement about the "due process revolution" continues into the 21st century. Warren took the lead in criminal justice; despite his years as a tough prosecutor, he always insisted that the police must play fair or the accused should go free. Warren was privately outraged at what he considered police abuses that ranged from warrantless searches to forced confessions.

Warren’s Court ordered lawyers for indigent defendants in Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), and prevented prosecutors from using evidence seized in illegal searches, in Mapp v. Ohio (1961). The famous case of Miranda v. Arizona (1966) summed up Warren's philosophy. Everyone, even one accused of crimes, still enjoyed constitutionally protected rights, and the police had to respect those rights and issue a specific warning when making an arrest. Warren did not believe in coddling criminals; thus in Terry v. Ohio (1968) he gave police officers leeway to stop and frisk those they had reason to believe held weapons.

Conservatives angrily denounced the "handcuffing of the police." They attacked Warren using official FBI statistics that showed violent crime and homicide rates shooting up nationwide; in New York City, for example, after steady to declining trends until the early 1960s, the homicide rate doubled in the period from 1964 to 1974 from just under 5 per 100,000 at the beginning of that period to just under 10 per 100,000 in 1974. After 1992 the homicide rates fell sharply.

First Amendment

The Warren Court's activism stretched into a new turf, especially First Amendment rights. The Court's decision outlawing mandatory school prayer in Engel v. Vitale (1962) brought vehement complaints that echoed into the next century.

Warren worked to nationalize the Bill of Rights by applying it to the states. Moreover, in one of the landmark cases decided by the Court, Griswold v. Connecticut (1963), the Warren Court announced a constitutionally protected right of privacy.

With the exception of the desegregation decisions, few decisions were unanimous. The eminent scholar Justice John Marshall Harlan II took Frankfurter's place as the Court's self-constraint spokesman, often joined by Potter Stewart and Byron R. White. But with the appointment of Thurgood Marshall, the first black justice, and Abe Fortas (replacing Goldberg), Warren could count on six votes in most cases.

Retirement delayed

In June 1968, Warren, fearing that Nixon would be elected president that year, worked out a retirement deal with President Johnson. Associate Justice Abe Fortas, who was secretly Johnson's top adviser, brokered the deal in which Fortas would become chief justice. The plan was foiled by the Senate, which ripped into Fortas's record and refused to confirm him. Warren remained on the Court, and Nixon was elected. In 1969 Warren learned that Fortas had made a secret lifetime contract for $20,000 a year to provide private legal advice to Louis Wolfson, a friend and financier in deep legal trouble; Warren immediately asked Fortas to resign.

Warren presided over the Court's October 1968 term and retired in spring 1969; Nixon named Warren E. Burger to succeed him. Burger, despite his distinguished profile and conservative reputation, was not effective in stopping Brennan's liberalism, so the "Warren Court" remained effective until about 1986, when William Rehnquist became Chief Justice and took control of the agenda.

Warren Commission

President Johnson demanded in the name of patriotic duty that Warren head the governmental commission that investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It was an unhappy experience for Warren, who did not want the assignment. As a judge, he valued candor and justice, but as a politician he recognized the need for secrecy in some matters. He insisted that the commission report should be unanimous, and so he compromised on a number of issues in order to get all the members to sign the final version. But many conspiracy theorists have attacked the commission's findings ever since, claiming that key evidence is missing or distorted and that there are many inconsistencies in the report. The Commission concluded that the assassination was the result of a single individual, Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone. Fears of possible Soviet or Cuban foreign involvement in the assassination necessitated the establishment of a bipartisan commission that, in turn, sought to depoliticize Oswald's role by downplaying his Communist affiliations. The commission weakened its findings by not sharing the government's deepest secrets. The report's lack of candor furthered antigovernment cynicism, which in turn stimulated conspiracy theorists who propounded any number of alternative scenarios, all mutually contradictory.

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.

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.

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

Death

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

Please register for a free Genetic Matrix account to access more information about this and all other celebrity pages

Earl Warren

Categories

Biography

Please register for a free Genetic Matrix account to access more information about this and all other celebrity pages