Earl Warren

While continuing to serve as the district attorney of Alameda County, Warren emerged as leader of the state Republican Party. He served as the county chairman for Herbert Hoover's 1932 campaign and, after Franklin D. Roosevelt won that election, he attacked Roosevelt's New Deal policies.[20] In 1934, Warren became chairman of the state Republican Party and he took a leading public role in opposing the gubernatorial candidacy of Democrat Upton Sinclair.[21] Warren earned national notoriety in 1936 for leading a successful campaign to elect a slate of unpledged delegates to the 1936 Republican National Convention; he was motivated largely by his opposition to the influence of Governor Frank Merriam and publisher William Randolph Hearst. In the 1936 presidential election, Warren campaigned on behalf of the unsuccessful Republican nominee, Alf Landon.[22]

After World War II broke out in Europe in 1939, foreign policy became an increasingly important issue in the United States; Warren rejected the isolationist tendencies of many Republicans and supported Roosevelt's rearmament campaign. The United States entered World War II after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.[46] Following the attack, Warren organized the state's civilian defense program, warning in January 1942 that, "the Japanese situation as it exists in this state today may well be the Achilles' heel of the entire civilian defense effort." He became a driving force behind the internment of over one hundred thousand Japanese Americans without any charges or due process.[47] Though the decision to intern Japanese Americans was made by General John L. DeWitt, and the internment was carried out by federal officials, Warren's advocacy played a major role in providing public justification for the internment.[48] By early 1944, Warren had come to regret his role in the internment of Japanese Americans, and he approved of the federal government's decision to allow Japanese Americans to begin returning to California in December 1944.[49]

Warren later said he:

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... Whenever I thought of the innocent little children who were torn from home, school friends, and congenial surroundings, I was conscience-stricken... [i]t was wrong to react so impulsively, without positive evidence of disloyalty.

— The Memoirs of Earl Warren (1977)[50]

Warren frequently clashed with Governor Culbert Olson over various issues, partly because they belonged to different parties. As early as 1939, supporters of Warren began making plans for his candidacy in California's 1942 gubernatorial election.[51] Though initially reluctant to run, Warren announced his gubernatorial candidacy in April 1942. He cross-filed in the Democratic and Republican primaries, ran without a party label, and refused to endorse candidates running for other offices. He sought to voters regardless of party, and stated "I can and will support President Roosevelt better than Olson ever has or ever will." Many Democrats, including Olson, criticized Warren for "put[ting] on a cloak of nonpartisanship," but Warren's attempts to appear above parties resonated with many voters. In August, Warren easily won the Republican primary, and surprised many observers by nearly defeating Olson in the Democratic primary. In November, he decisively defeated Olson in the general election, taking just under 57 percent of the vote. Warren's victory immediately made him a figure with national stature, and he enjoyed good relations with both the conservative wing of the Republican Party, led by Robert A. Taft, and the moderate wing of the Republican Party, led by Thomas E. Dewey.[52]

Governor Warren meets a young "gold miner" as part of the California centennials, 1948–50

Warren modernized the office of governor, and state government generally. Like most progressives, Warren believed in efficiency and planning. During World War II, he aggressively pursued postwar economic planning. Fearing another postwar decline that would rival the depression years, Governor Earl Warren initiated public works projects similar to those of the New Deal to capitalize on wartime tax surpluses and provide jobs for returning veterans. For example, his support of the Collier-Burns Act in 1947 raised gasoline taxes that funded a massive program of freeway construction. Unlike states where tolls or bonds funded highway construction, California's gasoline taxes were earmarked for building the system. Warren's support for the bill was crucial because his status as a popular governor strengthened his views, in contrast with opposition from trucking, oil, and gas lobbyists. The Collier-Burns Act helped influence passage of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, setting a pattern for national highway construction.[53] In the mid-1940s, Warren sought to implement a state universal health care, but he was unable to pass his plan due to opposition from the medical and business communities.[54] In 1945, the United Nations Charter was signed in San Francisco while Warren was the governor of California.[55] He played an important role in the United Nations Conference on International Organization from April 25 to June 26, 1945, which resulted in the United Nations Charter.[56][57][58]

Warren also pursued social legislation. He built up the state's higher education system based on the University of California and its vast network of small universities and community colleges.[59] After federal courts declared the segregation of Mexican schoolchildren illegal in Mendez v. Westminster (1947), Governor Warren signed legislation ending the segregation of American Indians and Asians.[60] He sought the creation of a commission to study employment discrimination, but his plan was blocked by Republicans in the state legislature.[61] Governor Warren stopped enforcing California's anti-miscegenation law after it was declared unconstitutional in Perez v. Sharp (1948). He also improved the hospital and prison systems.[62] These reforms provided new services to a fast-growing population; the 1950 Census showed that California's population had grown by over 50% over the previous ten years.[63]

By 1946, California's economy was booming, Warren was widely popular, and he enjoyed excellent relations with the state's top Democratic officeholder, Attorney General Robert W. Kenny. At the urging of state party leaders, Kenny agreed to run against Warren in the 1946 gubernatorial election, but Kenny was reluctant to criticize his opponent and was distracted by his role in the Nuremberg trials. As in 1942, Warren refused to endorse candidates for other offices, and he sought to portray himself as an effective, nonpartisan governor. Warren easily won the Republican primary for governor and, in a much closer vote, defeated Kenny in the Democratic primary. After winning both primaries, Warren endorsed Republican William Knowland's U.S. Senate candidacy and Goodwin Knight's candidacy for lieutenant governor. Warren won the general election by an overwhelming margin, becoming the first Governor of California since Hiram Johnson in 1914 to win a second term.[64]

Though he considered retiring after two terms, Warren ultimately chose to seek re-election in 1950, partly to prevent Knight from succeeding him. He easily won the Republican primary, but was defeated in the Democratic primary by James Roosevelt.[65] Warren consistently led Roosevelt in general election polls and won re-election in a landslide, taking 64 percent of the vote.[66] He was the first Governor of California elected to three consecutive terms.[55] During the 1950 campaign, Warren refused to formally endorse Richard Nixon, the Republican nominee for the Senate. Warren disliked what he saw as Nixon's ruthless approach to politics and was wary of having a conservative rival for leadership of the state party. Despite Warren's refusal to campaign for him, Nixon defeated Democratic nominee Helen Gahagan Douglas by a decisive margin.[67]

After his election as governor, Warren emerged as a potential candidate for president or vice president in the 1944 election. Seeking primarily to ensure his status as the most prominent Republican in California, he ran as a favorite son candidate in the 1944 Republican primaries. Warren won the California primary with no opposition, but Thomas Dewey clinched the party's presidential nomination by the time of the 1944 Republican National Convention. Warren delivered the keynote address of the convention, in which he called for a more liberal Republican Party. Dewey asked Warren to serve as his running mate, but Warren was uninterested in the vice presidency and correctly believed that Dewey would be defeated by President Roosevelt in the 1944 election.[68]

After his 1946 re-election victory, Warren began planning a run for president in the 1948 election. The two front-runners for the nomination were Dewey and Robert Taft, but Warren, Harold Stassen, Arthur Vandenberg, and General Douglas MacArthur each had significant support.[69] Prior to the 1948 Republican National Convention, Warren attempted to position himself as a dark horse candidate who might emerge as a compromise nominee. However, Dewey won the nomination on the third ballot of the convention.[70] Dewey once again asked Warren to serve as his running mate, and this time Warren agreed. Far ahead in the polls against President Harry S. Truman, the Democratic nominee, Dewey ran a cautious campaign that largely focused on platitudes rather than issues.[71] Warren campaigned across the country on behalf of the ticket, but was frustrated by his inability to support specific policies.[72] To the surprise of many observers, Truman won the election, and this became the only election Warren ever lost.[73][74]

After his 1950 re-election, Warren decided that he would seek the Republican nomination in the 1952 presidential election, and he announced his candidacy in November 1951. Taft also sought the nomination, but Dewey declined to make a third run for president. Dewey and his supporters instead conducted a long campaign to draft General Dwight D. Eisenhower as the Republican presidential nominee.[75] Warren ran in three Republican presidential primaries, but won just a handful of delegates outside of his home state. In the California primary, he defeated a challenge from Thomas H. Werdel, whose conservatives backers alleged that Warren had "abandoned Republicanism and embraced the objectives of the New Deal." After Eisenhower entered the race, Warren realized that his only hope of nomination was to emerge as a compromise nominee at the 1952 Republican National Convention after a deadlock between supporters of Eisenhower and Taft.[76]

After the primaries, Warren had the support of 80 delegates, while Eisenhower and Taft each had about 450 delegates. Though the California delegation was pledged to support Warren, many of the delegates personally favored Eisenhower or Taft. Unknown to Warren, Eisenhower supporters had promised Richard Nixon the vice presidency if he could swing the California delegation to Eisenhower.[77] By the time of the convention, Nixon and his supporters had convinced most California delegates to switch their votes to Eisenhower after the first presidential ballot.[78] Eisenhower won 595 votes on the first presidential ballot of the convention, just 9 short of the majority. Before the official end of the first ballot, several states shifted their votes to Eisenhower, giving him the nomination.[79] Warren's decision to support a convention rule that unseated several contested delegations was critical to Eisenhower's victory; Eisenhower himself said that "if anyone ever clinched the nomination for me, it was Earl Warren."[80] Nixon was named as Eisenhower's running mate, and Warren campaigned on behalf of the Republican ticket in fourteen different states. Ultimately, Eisenhower defeated Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson II, taking 55 percent of the national popular vote.[81] Nixon resigned from the Senate to become vice president, and Warren appointed Thomas Kuchel to the Senate seat vacated by Nixon.[82]

After the 1952 election, President-elect Eisenhower promised that he would appoint Warren to the next vacancy on the Supreme Court of the United States. Warren turned down the position of Secretary of the Interior in the new administration, but in August 1953 he agreed to serve as the Solicitor General.[83] In September 1953, before Warren's nomination as solicitor general was announced, Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson died.[84] To fill the critical position of chief justice, Eisenhower considered either elevating a sitting Supreme Court justice or appointing another individual with judicial experience but ultimately chose to honor his promise to appoint Warren to the first Supreme Court vacancy.[85] Explaining Warren's qualifications for the Court, Eisenhower wrote to his brother, "Warren has had seventeen years of practice in public law, during which his record was one of remarkable accomplishment and success.... He has been very definitely a liberal-conservative; he represents the kind of political, economic, and social thinking that I believe we need on the Supreme Court."[86] Warren received a recess appointment in October 1953, and the Senate confirmed Warren's appointment by acclamation in March 1954.[87] As of 2021, Warren is the most recent Chief Justice to have held statewide elected office at any point in his career and the most recent serving politician to be appointed Chief Justice. Warren was also the first Scandinavian-American to be appointed to the Supreme Court.[88]

The Warren Court (1953–1969)

When Warren was appointed, all of the other Supreme Court justices had been appointed by Presidents Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman, and most were committed New Deal liberal Democrats. Nonetheless, they disagreed about the role that courts should play. Felix Frankfurter and Robert H. Jackson led a faction that insisted upon judicial self-restraint and deference to the policymaking prerogatives of the White House and Congress. Hugo Black and William O. Douglas led the opposing faction by agreeing the Court should defer to Congress in matters of economic policy but favored a more activist role for the courts in matters related to individual liberties. Warren's belief that the judiciary must seek to do justice placed him with the Black and Douglas faction.[89] William J. Brennan Jr. became the intellectual leader of the activist faction after he was appointed to the court by Eisenhower in 1956 and complemented Warren's political skills by the strong legal skills that Warren lacked.[90]

As chief justice, Warren's most important prerogative was the power to assign opinions if he was in the majority. That power had a subtle but important role in shaping the Court's majority opinions since different individuals would write different opinions.[91] Warren initially asked the senior associate justice, Hugo Black, to preside over conferences until he became accustomed to the processes of the Court. However, Warren learned quickly and soon was in fact, as well as in name, the Court's chief justice.[92] Warren's strength lay in his public gravitas, his leadership skills, and his firm belief that the Constitution guaranteed natural rights and that the Court had a unique role in protecting those rights.[93][94] His arguments did not dominate judicial conferences, but Warren excelled at putting together coalitions and cajoling his colleagues in informal meetings.[95]

Warren saw the US Constitution as the embodiment of American values, and he cared deeply about the ethical implications of the Court's rulings.[96] According to Justice Potter Stewart, Warren's philosophical foundation were the "eternal, rather bromidic, platitudes in which he sincerely believed" and "Warren's great strength was his simple belief in the things we now laugh at: motherhood, marriage, family, flag, and the like."[97] The constitutional historian Melvin I. Urofsky concludes that "scholars agree that as a judge, Warren does not rank with Louis Brandeis, Black, or Brennan in terms of jurisprudence. His opinions were not always clearly written, and his legal logic was often muddled."[98] Other scholars have also reached this conclusion.[99][100]

Soon after joining the Court, Warren presided over the case of Brown v. Board of Education, which arose from the NAACP's legal challenge against Jim Crow laws. The Southern United States had implemented Jim Crow laws in aftermath of the Reconstruction Era to disenfranchise African Americans and segregate public schools and other institutions. In the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Court had held that the Fourteenth Amendment did not prohibit segregation in public institutions if the institutions were "separate but equal." In the decades after Plessy, the NAACP had won several incremental victories, but 17 states required the segregation of public schools by 1954. In 1951, the Vinson Court had begun hearing the NAACP's legal challenge to segregated school systems but had not rendered a decision when Warren took office.[101]

By the early 1950s, Warren had become personally convinced that segregation was morally wrong and legally indefensible. Warren sought not only to overturn Plessy but also to have a unanimous verdict. Warren, Black, Douglas, Burton, and Minton supported overturning the precedent, but for different reasons, Robert H. Jackson, Felix Frankfurter, Tom C. Clark, and Stanley Forman Reed were reluctant to overturn Plessy.[102] Nonetheless, Warren won over Jackson, Frankfurter, and Clark, in part by allowing states and federal courts the flexibility to pursue desegregation of schools at different speeds. Warren extensively courted the last holdout, Reed, who finally agreed to join a unanimous verdict because he feared that a dissent would encourage resistance to the Court's holding. After the Supreme Court formally voted to hold that the segregation of public schools was unconstitutional, Warren drafted an eight-page outline from which his law clerks drafted an opinion, and the Court handed down its decision in May 1954.[103]

In arranging a unanimous decision in Brown, Warren fully established himself as the leader of the Court.[104] He also remained a nationally prominent figure. After a 1955 Gallup poll found that a plurality of Republican respondents favored Warren as the successor to Eisenhower, Warren publicly announced that he would not resign from the Court under any circumstance. Eisenhower seriously considered retiring after one term and encouraging Warren to run in the 1956 presidential election but ultimately chose to run after he had received a positive medical report after his heart attack.[105] Despite that brief possibility, a split developed between Eisenhower and Warren, and some writers believe that Eisenhower once remarked that his appointment was "the biggest damn fool mistake I ever made."[106][lower-alpha 1]

Meanwhile, many Southern politicians expressed outrage at the Court's decisions and promised to resist any federal attempt to force desegregation, a strategy known as massive resistance. Although Brown did not mandate immediate school desegregation or bar other "separate but equal" institutions, most observers recognized that the decision marked the beginning of the end for the Jim Crow system.[110] Throughout his years as chief justice, Warren succeeded in keeping decisions concerning segregation unanimous. Brown applied only to schools, but soon, the Court enlarged the concept to other state actions by striking down racial classification in many areas. Warren compromised by agreeing to Frankfurter's demand for the Court to go slowly in implementing desegregation. Warren used Frankfurter's suggestion for a 1955 decision (Brown II) to include the phrase "all deliberate speed."[111] In 1956, after the Montgomery bus boycott, the Supreme Court affirmed a lower court's decision that segregated buses are unconstitutional.[112] Two years later, Warren assigned Brennan to write the Court's opinion in Cooper v. Aaron. Brennan held that state officials were legally bound to enforce the Court's desegregation ruling in Brown.[113]

In the 1956 term, the Warren Court received condemnation from anticommunists such as US Senator Joseph McCarthy by handing down a series of decisions, including Yates v. United States, which struck down laws designed to suppress communists and later led to the decline of McCarthyism.[114][115] The Warren Court's decisions on those cases represented a major shift from the Vinson Court, which had generally upheld such laws during the Second Red Scare.[114][116]

President Kennedy and Chief Justice Earl Warren with their wives, November 1963

After the Republican Party nominated Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election, Warren privately supported the Democratic nominee, John F. Kennedy. They became personally close after Kennedy was inaugurated. Warren later wrote that "no American during my long life ever set his sights higher for a better America or centered his attacks more accurately on the evils and shortcomings of our society than did [Kennedy]."[117] In 1962, Frankfurter retired and was replaced by Kennedy appointee Arthur Goldberg, which gave the liberal bloc a majority on the Court.[118] Goldberg left the Court in 1965 but was replaced by Abe Fortas, who largely shared Goldberg's judicial philosophy.[119] With the liberal bloc firmly in control, the Warren Court handed down a series of momentous rulings in the 1960s.[120]

The 1960s marked a major shift in constitutional interpretation, as the Warren Court continued the process of the incorporation of the Bill of Rights in which the provisions of the first ten amendments to the US Constitution were applied to the states.[121][lower-alpha 2] Warren saw the Bill of Rights as a codification of "the natural rights of man" against the government and believed that incorporation would bring the law "into harmony with moral principles."[123] When Warren took office, most of the provisions of the First Amendment already applied to the states, but the vast majority of the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government. The Warren Court saw the incorporation of the remaining provisions of the First Amendment as well as all or part of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments. The Warren Court also handed down numerous other important decisions regarding the Bill of Rights, especially in the field of criminal procedure.[121]

In The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court reversed a libel conviction of the publisher of The New York Times. In the majority opinion, Brennan articulated the actual malice standard for libel against public officials, which has become an enduring part of constitutional law.[124] In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the Court reversed the suspension of an eighth-grade student who wore a black armband in protest of the Vietnam War. Fortas's majority opinion noted that students did not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."[125] The Court's holding in United States v. Seeger expanded those who could be classified as conscientious objectors under the Selective Service System by allowing nonreligious individuals with ethical objections to claim conscientious objector status.[126] Another case, United States v. O'Brien, saw the Court uphold a prohibition against burning draft-cards.[127] Warren dissented in Street v. New York in which the Court struck down a state law that prohibited the desecration of the American flag. When his law clerks asked why he dissented in the case, Warren stated, "Boys, it's the American flag. I'm just not going to vote in favor of burning the American flag."[128] In the 1969 case of Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Court held that governments cannot punish speech unless it is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."[129]

An "Impeach Earl Warren sign", posted in San Francisco in October 1958

In 1962, Engel v. Vitale held that the Establishment Clause prohibits mandatory prayer in public school.[130] The ruling sparked a strong backlash from many political and religious leaders, some of whom called for the impeachment of Warren. Warren became a favored target of right-wing groups, such as the John Birch Society, as well as the 1964 Republican presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater.[131] Engel, the criminal procedure cases, and the persistent criticism of conservative politicians like Goldwater and Nixon contributed to a decline in the Court's popularity in the mid- and the late 1960s.[132] Griswold v. Connecticut had the Court strike down a state law designed to restrict access to contraception, and it established a constitutional right to privacy. Griswold would provide an important precedent for the later case of Roe v. Wade, which disallowed many laws designed to restrict access to abortion.[133]

In the early 1960s, the Court increasingly turned its attention to criminal procedure, which had traditionally been primarily a domain of the states. In Elkins v. United States (1960), Warren joined with the majority in striking down the "Silver Platter Doctrine," a loophole to the exclusionary rule that had allowed federal officials to use evidence that had been illegally gathered by state officials. The next year, in Mapp v. Ohio, the Court held that the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on "unreasonable searches and seizures" applied to state officials.[134] Warren wrote the majority opinion in Terry v. Ohio (1968) in which the Court established that police officers may frisk a criminal suspect if they have a reasonable suspicion that the suspect is committing or is about to commit a crime.[135] In Gideon v. Wainwright (1962), the Court held that the Sixth Amendment required states to furnish publicly-funded attorneys to all criminal defendants accused of a felony and unable to afford counsel. Prior to Gideon, criminal defendants had been guaranteed the right to counsel only in federal trials and capital cases.[136]

In Escobedo v. Illinois (1964), the Court held that the Sixth Amendment guarantees criminal suspects the right to speak to their counsel during police interrogations. Escobedo was limited to criminal suspects who had an attorney at the time of their arrest and requested to speak with that counsel. In the landmark case of Miranda v. Arizona, Warren wrote the majority opinion, which established a right to counsel for every criminal suspect and required police to give criminal suspects what became known as a "Miranda warning" in which suspects are notified of their right to an attorney and their right to silence. Warren incorporated some suggestions from Brennan, but his holding in Miranda was most influenced by his past experiences as a district attorney. Unlike many of the other Warren Court decisions, including Mapp and Gideon, Miranda created standards that went far beyond anything that had been established by any of the states. Miranda received a strong backlash from law enforcement and political leaders.[137] Conservatives angrily denounced what they called the "handcuffing of the police."[138]

In 1959, several residents dissatisfied with Tennessee's legislative districts brought suit against the state in Baker v. Carr. Like many other states, Tennessee had state legislative districts of unequal populations,[lower-alpha 3] and the plaintiffs sought more equitable legislative districts. In Colegrove v. Green (1946), the Supreme Court had declined to become involved in legislative apportionment and instead left the issue as a matter for Congress and the states. In Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1960), the Court struck down a redistricting plan designed to disenfranchise African-American voters, but many of the justices were reluctant to involve themselves further in redistricting.[141] Frankfurter insisted that the Court should avoid the "political thicket" of apportionment and warned that the Court would never be able to find a clear formula to guide lower courts.[142] Warren helped convince Associate Justice Potter Stewart to join Brennan's majority decision in Baker v. Carr, which held that redistricting was not a political question and so federal courts had jurisdiction over the issue. The opinion did not directly require Tennessee to implement redistricting but instead left it to a federal district court to determine whether Tennessee's districts violated the Constitution.[143] In another case, Gray v. Sanders, the Court struck down Georgia's County Unit System, which granted disproportional power to rural counties in party primaries.[144] In a third case, Wesberry v. Sanders, the Court required states to draw congressional districts of equal population.[145]

In Reynolds v. Sims (1963), the chief justice wrote what biographer Ed Cray terms "the most influential of the 170 majority opinions [Warren] would write." While eight of the nine justices had voted to require congressional districts of equal population in Wesberry, some of the justices were reluctant to require state legislative districts to be of equal population. Warren indicated that the Equal Protection Clause required that state legislative districts be apportioned on an equal basis: "legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests." His holding upheld the principle of "one man, one vote," which had previously been articulated by Douglas.[146] After the decision, the states reapportioned their legislatures quickly and with minimal troubles. Numerous commentators have concluded reapportionment was the Warren Court's great "success story."[147]

Civil rights continued to be a major issue facing the Warren Court in the 1960s. In Peterson v. Greenville (1963), Warren wrote the Court's majority opinion, which struck down local ordinances that prohibited restaurants from serving black and white individuals in the same room.[148] Later that decade, the Court upheld the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States. The Court held that the Commerce Clause empowered the federal government to prohibit racial segregation in public accommodations like hotels. The ruling effectively overturned the 1883 Civil Rights Cases in which the Supreme Court had held that Congress could not regulate racial discrimination by private businesses.[149] The Court upheld another landmark civil rights act, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, by holding that it was valid under the authority provided to Congress by the Fifteenth Amendment.[150]

In 1967, Warren wrote the majority opinion in the landmark case of Loving v. Virginia in which the Court struck down state laws banning interracial marriage. Warren was particularly pleased by the ruling in Loving since he had long regretted that the Court had not taken up the similar case of Naim v. Naim in 1955.[151] In Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1966), the Court struck down poll taxes in state elections.[152] In another case, Bond v. Floyd, the Court required the Georgia legislature to seat the newly-elected legislator Julian Bond; members of the legislature had refused to seat Bond because he opposed the Vietnam War.[153]

Earl Warren presents the Commission's report to President Johnson on September 24, 1964.

Shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the newly-inaugurated president, Lyndon B. Johnson, convinced Warren to serve as the head of a bipartisan commission tasked with investigating the assassination.[154] From December 1963 to October 1964, Warren simultaneously served as chief justice of the United States and chairman of the Warren Commission.[155]

At the start of the investigation, Warren decided to hire the commission’s legal staff from outside the government to avoid any improper influence on their work.[156]  Warren appointed Lee Rankin as general counsel and worked closely with Rankin and his assistants, Howard P. Willens and Norman Redlich, to recruit staff lawyers, supervise their investigation and publish the Commission's report.[157] To avoid the confusion and duplication of parallel investigations, Warren convinced the Texas authorities to defer any local inquiry into the assassination.[158]

Warren was personally involved in several aspects of the investigation.  He supervised four days of testimony by Lee Harvey Oswald’s widow, Marina Oswald, and was widely criticized for telling the press that, although her testimony would be publicly disclosed, “it might not be in your lifetime.”[159]  He attended the closed-door interview of Jacqueline Kennedy[160] and insisted on participating in the deposition of Jack Ruby in Dallas, where he visited the book depository.[161]  Warren also participated in the investigation of Kennedy’s medical treatment and autopsy.[162]  At Robert Kennedy’s insistence, Warren handled the difficult task of reviewing the autopsy photos alone.[163]  Because the photos were so gruesome, Warren decided that they should not be included in the Commission’s records.[164]

Warren closely supervised the drafting of the Commission’s report.  He wanted to ensure that Commission members had ample opportunity to evaluate the staff’s work and to make their own judgments about important conclusions in the report.[165] He insisted that the report should be unanimous and so he compromised on a number of issues to get all the members to sign the final version.  Although a reenactment of the assassination “produced convincing evidence” supporting the single-bullet theory, the Commission decided not to take a position on the single-bullet theory.[166]  The Commission unanimously concluded that the assassination was the result of a single individual, Lee Harvey Oswald, who acted alone.[167]

The Warren Commission was an unhappy experience for the chief justice.  As Willens recalled, “One can’t say too much about the Chief’s sacrifice.  The work was a drain on his physical well-being.”[168]  However, Warren always believed that the Commission’s primary conclusion, that Oswald acted alone, was correct.  In his memoirs, Warren wrote that Oswald was incapable of being the key operative in a conspiracy, and that any high-level government conspiracy would inevitably have been discovered.[169]  Newsweek magazine quoted Warren saying that, if he handled the Oswald case as a district attorney, “I could have gotten a conviction in two days and never heard about the case again.”[170]  Warren wrote that "the facts of the assassination itself are simple, so simple that many people believe it must be more complicated and conspiratorial to be true."[171] Warren told the Commission staff not to worry about conspiracy theories and other criticism of the report because “history will prove us right.”[172]

Chief Justice Warren swears in President Nixon on January 20, 1969.

By 1968, Warren was ready to retire from the Court. He hoped to travel the world with his wife, and he wanted to leave the bench before he suffered a mental decline, something that he perceived in both Hugo Black and William Douglas. He also feared that Nixon would win the 1968 presidential election and appoint a conservative successor if Warren left the Court later. On 13 June 1968, Warren submitted his letter of resignation to President Johnson (who made it official on 21 June[173]), effective upon the confirmation of a successor. In an election year, confirmation of a successor was not assured; after Warren announced his retirement, about half of the Senate Republican caucus pledged to oppose any Supreme Court appointment prior to the election.[174]

Johnson nominated Associate Justice Fortas, a personal friend and adviser to the president, as Warren's successor, and nominated federal appellate judge Homer Thornberry to succeed Fortas. Republicans and Southern Democrats joined together to scuttle Fortas's nomination. Their opposition centered on criticism of the Warren Court, including many decisions that had been handed down before Fortas joined the Court, as well as ethical concerns related to Fortas's paid speeches and closeness with Johnson. Though the majority of the Senate may have favored the confirmation of Fortas, opponents conducted a filibuster, which blocked the Senate from voting on the nomination, and Johnson withdrew the nomination.[175] In early 1969, Warren learned that Fortas had made a secret lifetime contract for $20,000 a year to provide private legal advice to Louis Wolfson, a friend and financier in deep legal trouble. Warren immediately asked Fortas to resign, which he did after some consideration.[176]

Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 presidential election and took office in January 1969. Though reluctant to be succeeded by a Nixon appointee, Warren declined to withdraw his letter of resignation. He believed that withdrawing the letter would be "a crass admission that he was resigning for political reasons." Nixon and Warren jointly agreed that Warren would retire in June 1969 to ensure that the Court would have a chief justice throughout the 1968 term and to allow Nixon to focus on other matters in the first months of his presidency.[177] Nixon did not solicit Warren's opinion regarding the next chief justice and ultimately appointed the conservative federal appellate judge Warren E. Burger.[178] Warren later regretted his decision to retire and reflected, "If I had ever known what was going to happen to this country and this Court, I never would have resigned. They would have had to carry me out of there on a plank."[179] In addition, he later remarked on his retirement and on the Warren Court, "I would like the Court to be remembered as the people's court."[180]

Earl Warren bust, U.S. Supreme Court

Warren is generally considered to be one of the most influential U.S. Supreme Court justices and political leaders in the history of the United States.[115][188][189][190][191][192][180] The Warren Court has been recognized by many to have created a liberal "Constitutional Revolution", which embodied a deep belief in equal justice, freedom, democracy and human rights.[115][193][194][195][196] In July 1974 after Warren died, Los Angeles Times commented that "Mr. Warren ranked with John Marshall and Roger Taney as one of the three most important chief justices in the nation’s history."[184] In December 2006, The Atlantic cited Earl Warren as the 29th most influential person in the history of the United States and the second most influential Chief Justice, after John Marshall.[188] In September 2018, The Economist named Warren as "the 20th century’s most consequential American jurist" and one of "the 20th century's greatest liberal jurists".[190][197]

President Harry S. Truman wrote in his tribute to Warren, which appeared in the California Law Review in 1970, "[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."[191] Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas wrote, in the same article, "in my view [Warren] will rank with Marshall and Hughes in the broad sweep of United States history".[191] According to biographer Ed Cray, Warren was "second in greatness only to John Marshall himself in the eyes of most impartial students of the Court as well as the Court's critics."[121] Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Lewis described Warren as "the closest thing the United States has had to a Platonic Guardian".[198] In 1958, Martin Luther King Jr. sent one copy of his newly published book, Stride Toward Freedom, to Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing on the first free end page:[199][200]

To: Justice Earl Warren. In appreciation for your genuine good-will, your great humanitarian concern, and your unswerving devotion to the sublime principles of our American democracy. With warm Regards, Martin L. King Jr.

The book remained with Warren's family until 2015, when it was auctioned online for US$49,335 (including the buyer's premium).[199]

On the other hand, Warren's critics found him a boring person. "Although Warren was an important and courageous figure and although he inspired passionate devotion among his followers...he was a dull man and a dull judge," observed Dennis J. Hutchinson.[201] Political conservatives attacked the Warren Court's rulings as inappropriate and have called for courts to be deferential to the elected political branches.[202][203] In his 1977 book Government by Judiciary originalist and legal scholar Raoul Berger accuses the Warren Court of overstepping its authority by interpreting the 14th Amendment in a way contrary to the original intent of its draftsmen and framers in order to achieve results that it found desirable as a matter of public policy.[204]

Overall, law professor Justin Driver divides interpretations of the Warren Court into three main groups: conservatives such as Robert Bork who attack the Court as "a legislator of policy...that was not theirs to make", liberals such as Morton Horwitz who strongly approve of the Court, and liberals such as Cass Sunstein who largely approve of the Court's overall legacy but believe that it went too far in making policy in some cases.[194] Driver offers a fourth view, arguing that the Warren Court took overly conservative stances in such cases as Powell v. Texas and Hoyt v. Florida.[205]

As for the legacy of the Warren Court, Chief Justice Burger, who succeeded Earl Warren in 1969, proved to be quite ineffective at consolidating conservative control over the Court, so the Warren Court legacy continued in many respects until about 1986, when William Rehnquist became chief justice and took firmer control of the agenda.[206] Even the more conservative Rehnquist Court refrained from expressly overturning major Warren Court cases such as Miranda, Gideon, Brown v. Board of Education, and Reynolds v. Sims.[207] On occasion, the Rehnquist Court even expanded Warren Court precedents—such as in Bush v. Gore, where the Rehnquist Court applied the principles of 1960s voting rights cases to invalidate Florida's recount in the 2000 United States presidential election.[208]

Earl Warren Hall, University of California, Berkeley

Earl Warren Building, headquarters of California Supreme Court (San Francisco)

Earl Warren was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1981. He was also honored by the United States Postal Service with a 29¢ Great Americans series postage stamp.[209] In December 2007, Warren was inducted into the California Hall of Fame.[210] An extensive collection of Warren's papers, including case files from his Supreme Court service, is located at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Most of the collection is open for research.

On the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, Warren's alma mater, "Earl Warren Hall" is named after him.[211] In addition, the UC Berkeley School of Law has established "The Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity", or "Warren Institute" for short, in memory of Earl Warren, while the "Warren Room" inside the Law Building was also named in his honor.[212][213]

A number of governmental and educational institutions have been named for Warren:

• The Earl Warren Building, the headquarters of the Supreme Court of California in San Francisco[214]
• The Earl Warren chapter of the American Inns of Court, Alameda County, California[215]
• The Warren Freeway, the portion of California State Route 13 in Alameda County
  

  Earl Warren College, University of California, San Diego
• In 1977, Fourth College, one of the six undergraduate colleges at the University of California, San Diego, was renamed Earl Warren College in his honor, and the Earl Warren Bill of Rights Project at UCSD is also named in his honor.[73]
• Warren High School, Downey, California[216]
• Earl Warren High School, San Antonio, Texas[217]
• Warren Hall, Bakersfield High School (the high school Warren attended)[218]
• Warren Junior High School, Bakersfield, California (Warren's hometown)[219]
• Earl Warren Middle School, Solana Beach, California[220]
• Warren Elementary School, Garden Grove, California[221]
• Earl Warren Elementary School, Lake Elsinore, California[222]
• The Earl Warren Showgrounds in Santa Barbara, California[223]

Earl Warren is portrayed in the following films:

• 2016: Oscar-nominated Loving (2016).
• 1999–2001: In the alternate history Worldwar: Colonization trilogy by Harry Turtledove, Warren is depicted as being the President of the United States in the early 1960s.
• 1991: Oscar-winning JFK (1991).
• 1991: Golden-Globe-nominated, Emmy-winning Separate but Equal (1991)
• 1989: Oscar-nominated documentary Super Chief: The Life and Legacy of Earl Warren.
• 1980: Emmy-nominated Gideon's Trumpet (1980), which was based on the 1960s book Gideon's Trumpet.