The 14th chief justice of the United States, Earl Warren, is most well-known for his landmark rulings: Brown v. Board of Education, Miranda v. Arizona, Loving v. Virginia, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, and Tinker v. Des Moines, among many others. In President Harry Truman’s view, “[t]he Warren record as Chief Justice has stamped him in the annals of history as the man who read and interpreted the Constitution in relation to its ultimate intent. He sensed the call of the times – and he rose to the call.” (SCOTUSblog readers back in 2021 apparently felt similarly, crowning Warren “the greatest justice in history” in a bracketed tournament.)
Born in Los Angeles in 1891 to a Norwegian immigrant railroad worker, Warren grew up in Bakersfield, California. Even before high school, the future chief justice listened to criminal cases at the local courthouse. His father was temporarily blacklisted following the Pullman Strike, and Warren also worked for the railroad company; these experiences, he noted in his memoirs, contributed to his “progressive political and legal attitudes.” After earning his law degree from UC Berkeley in 1914, Warren spent virtually his entire career in public office, first as Alameda County’s district attorney – where in 13 years he apparently never had a conviction overturned by a higher court – then as California’s attorney general and, starting in 1942, its governor.
Warren’s record as attorney general is marred by his advocacy of the forced internment of over 100,000 persons of Japanese descent during World War II (with more than two-thirds of these individuals being native-born U.S. citizens). In his memoirs, Warren said that he had “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.”
Despite this, Warren was elected governor for three consecutive terms, and in 1948, joined Thomas Dewey on the Republican presidential ticket as its vice-presidential nominee (but only after turning down Dewey twice). That turned out to be the only time Warren lost in an election.
Warren’s path to the chief justiceship came partly through circumstance. When Chief Justice Fred Vinson died suddenly in September 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, honoring a promise to Warren that he would make him his first appointment to the Supreme Court (Warren had campaigned for Eisenhower in the general election despite initially running as a potential candidate), appointed Warren interim chief justice. On March 1, 1954, Warren’s appointment was confirmed by the Senate.
From the get-go, Warren was able to forge relative solidarity on the court (something that his predecessor had continually failed at) by pragmatically appealing to the different justices. In his very first term, Warren authored the unanimous opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring racially segregated public schools inherently unequal under the 14th Amendment and overturning the “separate but equal” doctrine that had prevailed since Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. The decision affected 21 states and the District of Columbia, though many of the Southern states continued to resist the court’s ruling. Following Brown, Warren faced calls for impeachment for the remainder of his term in office.
Warren also participated in, or wrote, several rulings which significantly altered the legal and political landscape. In 1964’s Reynolds v. Sims, Warren established the “one person, one vote” principle, holding that representation in state legislatures must be apportioned equally on the basis of population – a ruling Warren said was his most important contribution to American law.
Warren’s tenure reshaped several other areas of law. Miranda v. Arizona required police to advise suspects of their rights before questioning – a ruling shaped in part by Warren’s “close association” with August Vollmer, the Berkeley chief of police and an early advocate for interrogation reform. Loving v. Virginia struck down bans on interracial marriage, and Gideon v. Wainwright guaranteed the right to counsel to all criminal defendants. And on First Amendment grounds, the Warren Court produced New York Times Co. v. Sullivan and Brandenburg v. Ohio – which, respectively, held that a public official can only recover damages in a civil defamation suit if the statement was made with “actual malice,” and determined that a state cannot prohibit speech unless the advocacy is “directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and is “likely to produce such action.”
Then there is the matter of the Warren Commission. In 1963, President Lyndon Johnson asked Warren to chair the commission investigating President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Warren initially declined, citing constitutional concerns about separation of powers, the court’s heavy docket, and the potential for future litigation to require his recusal – before ultimately accepting after Johnson pressed him further. The end result satisfied few people, and many believe that Warren’s instinct for secrecy undermined a more robust public defense against conspiracy theories.
After 16 years on the court, Warren retired from it in June 1969, succeeded by Warren Burger, and died from heart problems in July 1974, at the age of 83, at Georgetown University Hospital in D.C. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981. Although no fan of the Warren Court, even President Richard Nixon said on the night of Warren’s death that “America has lost one of her finest public servants.”