Chief Justice Earl Warren
Today’s Justice of the Day is: EARL WARREN. Chief Justice Warren was born on this day, March 19, in 1891.
Chief Justice Warren was born in Los Angeles, California, the state from which he would be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. He attended the University of California, Berkeley for both his undergraduate and legal education, earning a B.A. in 1912 and a J.D. from the Boalt Hall School of Jurisprudence in 1914.
Immediately upon graduation, Chief Justice Warren entered private practice in San Francisco, California and Oakland, California, before moving on serve as a United States Army First Lieutenant (from 1917 to 1918). In 1919, he was a Clerk of the California State Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, and began a year-long term as Deputy City Attorney of Oakland. Chief Justice Warren became Deputy District Attorney of Alameda County, California (in which Oakland is located) in 1920, later rising to become Chief Deputy District Attorney in 1923, before becoming District Attorney for that jurisdiction in 1925. He held that office until 1938, the year he began a four year-long term as Attorney General of California; his time there was not without controversy, as he was a major advocate for the infamous internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War, for which he would later apologize and express remorse. Chief Justice Warren went on to become California’s second-longest serving Governor (he had been the state’s longest serving chief executive until he was surpassed by incumbent Governor Edmund G. Brown), taking office in 1942. His tenure saw him cultivate significant popularity with the state’s voters and run as the Republican Party’s candidate for Vice President of the United States in 1948. Chief Justice Warren ultimately remained in that office until his appointment as Chief Justice of the United States.
Chief Justice Warren received a recess appointment from President Dwight D. Eisenhower on October 2, 1953, to a seat vacated by Chief Justice Frederick M. Vinson, and was subsequently nominated to that same position by President Eisenhower on January 11, 1954. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 1, and received his commission on March 20. Chief Justice Warren took the Judicial Oath to officially join the SCUS on October 5, and assumed senior status on June 23, 1969. His service was terminated on July 9, 1974, due to his death.
Chief Justice Warren is one of the most well-known and perhaps greatest Chief Justices in the history of the United States. His tenure saw American constitutional law begin its transformation from merely a legalistic tool of the powerful to a serious force for good in ordinary life (in at least some circumstances, if not all). Chief Justice Warren is probably most famous for authoring the opinion of the Court in Brown v. Board of Education (I) (1954), for which he had to lobby his fellow Justices immensely to ensure it would be unanimous (he hoped that unanimity would help forestall mass resistance to its holdings) and which declared institutionalized racial segregation in schooling unconstitutional (in effect overturning past SCUS precedent, from cases like Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), affirming the acceptability of “separate but equal” accommodations). His influence extended far beyond just racial controversies, as he helped reshape doctrine governing the right to privacy by joining Justice William O. Douglas’ opinion of the Court in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which held that a law forbidding the use of contraceptives by married couples represented an unconstitutional intrusion into marital privacy, and transformed criminal law with decisions like his opinion of the Court in Miranda v. Arizona (1966), which created the now-famous “Miranda” warning that police officers must give to the accused to inform them of their rights.