Warren Court
The Warren Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1953 to 1969 when Earl Warren served as the chief justice. The Warren Court is widely regarded as the most liberal Supreme Court in U.S. history and marks the last period in which liberals held clear control of the Court.
The Warren Court expanded civil rights, civil liberties, judicial power, and the federal power in dramatic ways. It has been widely recognized that the court, led by the liberal bloc, created a major "Constitutional Revolution" in U.S. history.
The Warren Court brought "one man, one vote" to the United States through a series of rulings, and created the Miranda warning. In addition, the court was both applauded and criticized for bringing an end to de jure racial segregation in the United States, incorporating the Bill of Rights, and ending officially sanctioned voluntary prayer in public schools. The period is recognized as the most liberal point that judicial power has ever reached, with a substantial continuing impact.
Membership
The Warren Court began on October 5, 1953, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren, the incumbent governor of California, to replace Fred Vinson as Chief Justice of the United States. The court began with Warren and the remaining eight members of the Vinson Court: Hugo Black, Stanley Forman Reed, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Robert H. Jackson, Harold Hitz Burton, Tom C. Clark, and Sherman Minton.Jackson died in 1954, and Minton retired in 1956. They were replaced by John Marshall Harlan II and William J. Brennan Jr. Another vacancy occurred when Reed retired in 1957 and was replaced by Charles Evans Whittaker. Burton then retired in 1958, and Eisenhower appointed Potter Stewart in his place. When Frankfurter and Whittaker retired in 1962, then-President John F. Kennedy appointed two new justices: Byron White and Arthur Goldberg. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson encouraged Goldberg to resign to become Ambassador to the United Nations, and nominated Abe Fortas to take his place. Clark retired in 1967, and Johnson appointed the first African American justice, Thurgood Marshall, to the court. The Warren Court ended on June 23, 1969, when Earl Warren retired and was replaced by Warren E. Burger. Prominent members of the Court during the Warren Court era besides the Chief Justice included Associate Justices: Brennan, Douglas, Black, Frankfurter, and Harlan II.
Timeline
Other branches
Presidents during this court included Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon. Congresses during this court included 83rd through the 91st United States Congresses.Warren's leadership
One of the primary factors in Warren's leadership was his political background, having served two and a half terms as Governor of California and experience as the Republican candidate for vice president in 1948. Warren brought a strong belief in the remedial power of law. According to historian Bernard Schwartz, Warren's view of the law was pragmatic, seeing it as an instrument for obtaining equity and fairness. Schwartz argues that Warren's approach was most effective "when the political institutions had defaulted on their responsibility to try to address problems such as segregation and reapportionment and cases where the constitutional rights of defendants were abused."A related component of Warren's leadership was his focus on broad ethical principles, rather than narrower interpretative structures. Describing the latter as "conventional reasoning patterns," Professor G. Edward White suggests Warren often disregarded these in groundbreaking cases such as Brown v. Board of Education, Reynolds v. Sims and Miranda v. Arizona, where such traditional sources of precedent were stacked against him. White suggests Warren's principles "were philosophical, political, and intuitive, not legal in the conventional technical sense."
Warren's leadership was characterized by remarkable consensus on the court, particularly in some of the most controversial cases. These included Brown v. Board of Education, Gideon v. Wainwright, and Cooper v. Aaron, which were unanimously decided, as well as Abington School District v. Schempp and Engel v. Vitale, each striking down religious recitations in schools with only one dissent. In an unusual action, the decision in Cooper was personally signed by all nine justices, with the three new members of the Court adding that they supported and would have joined the Court's decision in Brown v. Board.
Fallon says that, "Some thrilled to the approach of the Warren Court. Many law professors were perplexed, often sympathetic to the Court's results but skeptical of the soundness of its constitutional reasoning. And some of course were horrified."
Vision
Professor John Hart Ely in his book Democracy and Distrust famously characterized the Warren Court as a "Carolene Products Court". This referred to the famous Footnote Four in United States v. Carolene Products, in which the Supreme Court had suggested that heightened judicial scrutiny might be appropriate in three types of cases:- those where a law was challenged as a deprivation of a specifically enumerated right ;
- those where a challenged law made it more difficult to achieve change through normal political processes; and
- those where a law impinged on the rights of "discrete and insular minorities."
- its aggressive reading of the first eight amendments in the Bill of Rights
- its commitment to unblocking the channels of political change
- its vigorous protection of the rights of racial minority groups
Professor Rebecca Zietlow argues that the Warren Court brought an expansion in the "rights of belonging", which she characterizes as "rights that promote an inclusive vision of who belongs to the national community and facilitate equal membership in that community".
Archibald Cox, who as Solicitor General from 1961 to 1965 saw the Court up close, summarized: "The responsibility of government for equality among men, the openness of American society to change and reform, and the decency of the administration of criminal justice received both creative and enduring impetus from the work of the Warren Court."
Historically significant decisions
Important decisions during the Warren Court years included decisions holding segregation policies in public schools and anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional ; ruling that the Constitution protects a general right to privacy ; that states are bound by the decisions of the Supreme Court and cannot ignore them ; that public schools cannot have official prayer or mandatory Bible readings ; the scope of the doctrine of incorporation was dramatically increased; reading an equal protection clause into the Fifth Amendment ; holding that the states may not apportion a chamber of their legislatures in the manner in which the United States Senate is apportioned ; and holding that the Constitution requires active compliance.- Racial segregation: Brown v. Board of Education, Bolling v. Sharpe, Cooper v. Aaron, Gomillion v. Lightfoot, Griffin v. County School Board, Green v. School Board of New Kent County, Lucy v. Adams, Loving v. Virginia, Boynton v. Virginia
- Voting, redistricting, and malapportionment: Baker v. Carr, Reynolds v. Sims, Wesberry v. Sanders
- Criminal procedure: Brady v. Maryland, Mapp v. Ohio, Miranda v. Arizona, Escobedo v. Illinois, Gideon v. Wainwright, Katz v. United States, Terry v. Ohio
- Free speech: New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, Brandenburg v. Ohio, Yates v. United States, Roth v. United States, Jacobellis v. Ohio, Memoirs v. Massachusetts, Tinker v. Des Moines School District
- Establishment Clause: Engel v. Vitale, Abington School District v. Schempp
- Free Exercise Clause: Sherbert v. Verner
- Right to privacy and reproductive rights: Griswold v. Connecticut
- Cruel and unusual punishment: Trop v. Dulles, ''Robinson v. California''
Warren's role
When Warren joined the Court in 1954, all the justices had been appointed by either Franklin D. Roosevelt or Harry S. 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 that 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 central role. Warren's belief that the judiciary must seek to do justice placed him with the latter group, although he did not have a solid majority until after Frankfurter's retirement in 1962.