Justice For All
This week’s Book of the Week is “Justice For All: Earl Warren and The Nation He Made”. The author is Jim Newton. This book was featured on Book TV on C-Span2 on Saturday, April 25, 2009.
Ask anyone what are the three most lasting achievements of the Eisenhower Administration. The Interstate Highway System is one, another is Eisenhower’s farewell address, the most memorable since George Washington. Eisenhower warned about the power of a military-industrial complex. The third, though President Eisenhower didn’t think so, was his appointment of Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Earl Warren was the longest serving governor of California. He was, as Governor, a moderate centrist Republican in the tradition of Hiram Johnson. Warren won reelection as governor one time by winning both Republican and Democratic party nominations.
On the Supreme Court, Warren used his considerable political skills to build consensus. In the larger society the Warren Court was characterized by some on the right as a liberal activist court intent on legislating from the bench. Gideon vs. Wainwright (372 U.S. 335) for example extended Sixth Amendment right to counsel to states under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Then Miranda vs. Arizona (384 U.S. 436) required notifications regarding right to silence, right to an attorney, etc. in cases involving police interrogations and confessions.
As a demonstration of Warren’s consensus building skill Newton cites the 9-0 decision in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka (347 U.S. 483). Warren got Justice Reed to concur in the opinion.
Was the Warren Court liberal, activist, intent on legislating from the bench? Newton says no. He says that Earl Warren believed in conservative reform not liberal activism.
Gradual, conservative constitutional reform has a long tradion in thought. See, for example, Edmund Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France”.
The subject is timely for today because President Obama may have more than one Supreme Court nomination to make. Warren believed that the Court exists to strike a balance between the weak and powerless versus the rich and powerful.
Posted by Gypsy Chief
Cable Television commentators continuously refer to Earl Warren as a liberal activist Chief Justice. I think he balanced the scales a bit after decades of a Court which had tilted to the right.