Earl Warren | Biography

Earl Warren served as the fourteenth chief justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1953 to 1969. Warren, who was appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, had a long political career before coming chief justice. In 1948 he was the Republican Party's unsuccessful candidate for vice president. When first appointed many legal commentators did not expect from Warren, as he was an obvious political appointee who lacked judicial experience. However, within a year he had artfully negotiated a unanimous decision striking down racially segregated public schools. By the 1960s he had become the supreme judicial activist, leading the Court to make decisions that transformed many avenues of civil society. In the area of criminal law, Warren engineered a revolution that forced the states to change many parts of the their criminal procedure.

Warren was born on March 19, 1891 in Los Angeles, California. He earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and joined the California bar in 1914. Following service in the army during World War I, Warren set up a private law practice in Francisco. However, he soon left to join government service, a career he never left. By 1925 he had been elected the Alameda County district attorney, a visible public position that furthered his political ambitions. By the late 1930s Warren had become a force to contend with in Republican Party politics. He was elected attorney general in 1938 and earned high marks for his professionalism.

Towards the end of his term, however, the Japanese attacked U.S. force at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This sneak attack, which triggered U.S. involvement in World War II, created hysteria on the West Coast. As attorney general, Warren advocated the removal of all Japanese Americans from California as a way to prevent espionage and sabotage. The federal government agreed and all Japanese Americans were moved to camps for the duration of the war. Towards the end of his live, Warren publicly admitted that this had been one of the biggest mistakes of his career.

Warren was elected governor of California three time between 1942 and 1950. Although he lost the 1948 vice presidential race on a ticket headed by Thomas E. Dewey, Warren remained a powerful figure in Republican politics. His role in seeing Dwight Eisenhower elected president in 1952 paved the way for his appointment as chief justice in 1953.

Warren's first achievement was getting the Court to agree to a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S.483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954). In this case, the Court repudiated an 1896 decision in which it had ruled that "separate but equal" public facilities for blacks and whites was unconstitutional. A number of states had enacted laws mandating racially segregated public schools and Warren made clear in his opinion that these laws were unconstitutional. He wrote that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," because they denied African American children equal protection of the law as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The vision of racially integrated schools as a public good drove the Court's civil rights agenda for several decades.

Warren also led a revolution in constitutional rights for criminal suspects in state courts. Until the 1960s, the Supreme Court had limited the reach of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the federal courts. Warren and the majority, which came to be called the Warren Court, broadened the scope of the amendments by ruling, on a case-by-case basis, that these rights applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. This "incorporation" doctrine proved a powerful tool for change. In Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that evidence obtained through an unlawful search or seizure, in violation of the Fourth Amendment, must not be used in the defendant's criminal trial in state court. 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 applied to state criminal proceedings. This meant that indigent defendants must be provided an attorney at no cost. The ruling has led to the development of state public defender systems.

Warren's most controversial criminal case is Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed. 694 (1966). Warren announced a set of warnings that police in state proceedings must give to a suspect in custody before attempting to interrogate the suspect. These Miranda warnings transformed police procedure. Moreover, Warren put teeth into the decision by stating that evidence obtained in violation of these warnings must be excluded from trial.

Warren also had a hand in changing the composition of state legislatures. In Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506 (1964), Warren declared that the principle of "one person, one vote" must be applied so that all legislatures apportion their voting districts on the basis of population. This decision eventually led to apportionment that gave urban areas more clout than the rural districts that had controlled almost all state legislatures for several generations.

Warren also played an extra-judicial role during a time of national crisis. In late 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson persuaded Warren to head a commission of prominent Americans that would investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Warren reluctantly agreed to the request but was uncomfortable with participating in this extra-judicial activity. Dubbed the Warren Commission, the group conducted one of the largest criminal investigations in U.S. history. The 1964 Warren Commission report has remained controversial, as critics have attacked its conclusions that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin and that there was no conspiracy to kill the president. However, no credible evidence has yet been produced to substantiate any alternate explanation.

Warren wanted to retire in 1968 but stayed on in the position until 1969 after Republicans blocked the nomination of Justice Abe Fortas. Warren's tenure as chief justice produced major changes in every facet of constitutional law. Warren never pretended to be a legal scholar but believed the Supreme Court had to address problems that other institutions could not or would not confront. This lead critics to charge that Warren's brand of judicial activism usurped the legislative branch. Warren died on July 9, 1974 in Washington, D.C.