Warren Earl Burger | Biography

Warren Earl Burger served as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1969 to 1986. Burger, who had previously served as a federal appellate court judge and as assistant attorney general, was deeply committed to modernizing and streamlining the U.S. court system. A judicial centrist, Burger sought a more limited role for the Supreme Court after the tenure of his predecessor, Earl Warren.

Burger was born on September 17, 1907, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. After graduating from high school, he financed his formal education by taking a job as an insurance salesman. Burger completed his academic requirements at night by attending the University of Minnesota for two years and then enrolling at the St. Paul College of Law (now William Mitchell College of Law). He graduated from law school in 1931 and was admitted to the Minnesota bar the same year. Burger joined one of the leading law firms in Saint Paul and became a partner in less than three years, which is an unusually short time.

Burger continued in general law practice until 1953, but during the 1940s and early 1950s he was an active member of the Minnesota Republican Party. He worked on the unsuccessful 1948 and 1952 presidential campaigns of Minnesota governor Harold E. Stassen, but in the process came to the attention of prominent Republicans.

In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Burger as an assistant U.S. attorney general to head the civil division, one of the largest divisions in the Department of Justice. After three years, Burger resigned, intending to return to Saint Paul to resume the private practice of law. However, those plans were forestalled in 1956 when President Eisenhower persuaded him to remain in Washington and appointed him to the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Burger's opinions established him as a leader on that court, and his reputation was furthered by a speech on the American criminal justice system that he delivered at Ripon College in 1967. His recommendations for reform outlined in the Ripon College speech received national media attention and were frequently quoted by the 1968 Republican Party candidates. His interest in court reform would later become the centerpiece of his term as chief justice.

When, in 1969, President Richard Nixon was faced with the vacancy on the Supreme Court occasioned by the retirement of Chief Justice Earl Warren, he turned to Burger. Following the unanimous endorsement of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he was speedily confirmed by the Senate and sworn in as the fifteenth Chief Justice of the United States in 1969. Nixon had hoped that Burger would turn the Court away from the judicial activism sponsored by Warren, but Burger did not become the conservative chief justice that Nixon desired.

The Burger Court was more of a centrist body, yet it created new constitutional doctrine in such areas as the right to privacy, due process, access to the courts, free exercise of religion, obscenity, freedom of the press, and gender equality. No modern chief justice was called upon to wrestle with so many critical issues relating to the separation of governmental powers as was Burger. In United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 94 S.Ct. 3090, 41 L.Ed.2d 1039 (1974), Burger, writing for a unanimous Court, ordered President Nixon to surrender tapes and records subpoenaed in the Watergate cover-up trial, a ruling that led to Nixon's resignation two weeks later. In INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 103 S.Ct. 2764, 77 L.Ed.2d 317 (1983), Burger delivered the opinion that invalidated the one-house legislative veto that had been the practice of Congress for over a half-century. In Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 93 S.Ct. 2607, 37 L.Ed.2d 419 (1973), Burger established the use of "contemporary community standards" in determining whether material is obscene. Burger announced a set of three guidelines: (1) whether the average person applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (2) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (3) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Philosophically, Burger desired that the law be useful and relevant to society. He approached each case before the Court without rigid ideology or preconceived determination, seeking to decide correctly each case on its own merits and to decide no more than the case required. His independence made him impossible to predict or categorize. Instead, he valued common sense and looked for reasonable, practical solutions to problems, but he did not believe the courts should invade the province of other government branches.

In addition to the heavy workload of the Supreme Court, Burger functioned as the principal administrative officer of the federal judicial system. He chaired the Judicial Conference, monitored legislation affecting the judiciary, entertained visiting dignitaries, was a prolific speaker and writer on an array of subjects, and was actively involved with the National Judicial College, the National Center for State Courts, the Institute for Court Management, and the Federal Judicial Administration Center.

One of Burger's goals as chief justice was to make the state and federal courts more efficient and easier to use. Through his commitment to better court administration, he promoted the idea of having the courts run by professional administrators rather than by judges and elected court officials. In addition, he pushed the states to mandate that licensed attorneys and judges take continuing legal education courses. In addition, he railed against lawyer advertising that he believed detracted from the integrity of the legal profession.

He served on the boards of the National Geographic Society and the Smithsonian Institution, and his dedication to the preservation of history led him to found the Supreme Court Historical Society and to create the position of curator at the Supreme Court. When Burger retired in 1986 after seventeen years on the Court, he chaired the Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution.

Burger died on June 25, 1995, in Washington, D. C.