Between 1953 and 1969, the Supreme Court decided some of the most monumental cases in U.S. history. Show Led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the so-called Warren Court ruled on school segregation, interracial marriage and the rights of criminal defendants. Below, an excerpt from “Democracy and Equality.”
Introduction: Why the Warren Court Matters Today  The Warren Court changed all of that. In all of these ways, and others, the Constitution, as we know it today, is very much the work of the Warren Court. It would be unthinkable to return to the world that existed before the Warren Court. But despite that, the Warren Court today does not have the reputation it deserves. Conservative critics attack it—now, as they did then— as “lawless.” Some moderates try to establish their even-handed bona fides by equating the supposed excesses of the Warren Court with the unprincipled decisions of the conservative Courts that followed it. And even some progressive supporters of the Warren Court are defensive— suggesting, for example, that while the Warren Court did good things, its decisions were not always legally sound. All of these criticisms are mistaken. Critics who say that the Warren Court “went too far” or was “too activist” should be asked: which of the Warren Court’s decisions would you overturn? Would you say that states should have the power to segregate public schools? Or make it a crime to marry someone of a different race? Or forbid married couples to use contraceptives? Would you really reject the principle of one person, one vote? Do you disagree that the central meaning of the First Amendment is that people must be free to criticize the government? Or that a criminal defendant who can’t afford a lawyer should have one nonetheless? Some of the most conservative Supreme Court justices of the last fifty years have accepted—even celebrated—the warnings required by the Warren Court’s once-controversial decision in Miranda v. Arizona. So what was it about the Warren Court that was so activist, or excessive, or illegitimate? The Warren Court’s decisions were innovative, of course. They changed the law, and they changed society. But many of the greatest judges in our legal tradition—John Marshall, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Benjamin Cardozo—are famous precisely because they changed the law. Like the Marshall Court, the Warren Court had a vision of the role the Supreme Court should play in American government. But like other great judges and justices, the justices of the Warren Court did not simply impose that vision on society. To the contrary, even the Warren Court’s most controversial decisions had deep roots in American law and traditions. Today, especially, it is important to see that these criticisms of the Warren Court are wrong. Since 1969, the Supreme Court has be- come increasingly conservative. In this environment, the notion that the rulings of the Warren Court were examples of excessive judicial “activism” that were not based on law is especially toxic. That line of criticism opens the door to conservative claims that conservatives, alone, are truly committed to the rule of law—that the decisions of the Warren Court were the product of the justices’ political opinions or fuzzy liberal sentiment, not real law. It rationalizes aggressively conservative judicial decisions as a necessary corrective—or, as some self-identified moderates might say, an understandable reaction—to the supposed liberal excesses of the Warren era. All of that is wrong. The Warren Court’s decisions—unlike, it should be said, many decisions of the conservative Courts that followed it—were principled, lawful, and consistent with the spirit and fundamental values of our Constitution. Democrats, with a Small d The Warren Court’s vision, at its core, was deeply democratic. The Warren Court’s critics, including many sympathetic critics, often portray the Court’s members as judicial imperialists who simply took over policymaking from elected representatives. But that is not what the Warren Court did. Earl Warren was one of the most successful politicians of his generation—and, by the way, a Republican—and the Warren Court’s most fundamental commitment was to the principles of democracy. The Warren Court, for example, was conspicuously reluctant to strike down Acts of Congress. The more conservative Courts that followed the Warren Court have overruled very few of the Warren Court’s supposedly activist decisions involving racial discrimination, criminal defendants’ rights, and freedom of speech. But those conservative Courts have repeatedly overruled, or cut back, key Warren Court decisions that gave power to Congress.1 If you’re looking for judicial imperialists, that’s where you should look: To the conservative successors of the Warren Court who have aggressively asserted the primacy of the Court over elected members of Congress in a way the Warren Court never did. Of course, many of the Warren Court’s greatest decisions did reject laws enacted by the states. But those decisions, too, reflected a deep commitment to democracy. The Warren Court acted on the premise that the role of the Supreme Court is to intervene when American democracy was not truly democratic: when some groups were marginalized or excluded and denied their fair share of democratic political power. Most important, the Warren Court protected the interests of African Americans in the Jim Crow South, who were effectively kept from voting in many places and were utterly excluded, often violently, from positions of influence. The Warren Court protected political dissidents, stating unequivocally that free and open debate is a central commitment of any democratic government. In its “one person, one vote” decisions, the Warren Court put an end to manipulative and unjustified disparities in people’s ability to elect their representatives. The Warren Court acted on behalf of members of minority religious groups whose interests were disregarded by the majority, and of criminal defendants who were often also members of discriminated-against minority groups and who lacked any effective voice in politics. Contrary to the critics, this was a principled and appropriate role for the Supreme Court to play. Ordinarily, the people’s elected representatives should make the important political decisions in a democracy. If the courts are to step in, they must have a reason: a reason why a particular issue should not be left to ordinary democratic processes. In the cases that made the Warren Court famous, there were such reasons. That is why the Warren Court’s decisions have held up over time. In an interview near the end of his career, Earl Warren said that if the “one person, one vote” decisions had come earlier, Brown v. Board of Education—the decision that struck down school segregation—would not have been necessary, because truly democratic governments would have abolished segregation without the courts’ intervention. Warren’s statement was almost certainly unrealistic. But it reflected his deep belief in democracy, one that guided the work of his Court. The Warren Court did the things—fighting race discrimination, making sure that everyone’s vote counted the same, protecting dissidents from a majority that wanted to silence them—that a democracy needs to do and that elected representatives cannot always be trusted to do. From DEMOCRACY AND EQUALITY: The Enduring Constitutional Vision of the Warren Court by Geoffrey R. Stone and David A. Strauss. Copyright © 2020 by Oxford University Press and published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
Related to Warren Court: Rehnquist Court
From 1953 to 1969, Earl Warren presided as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Under Warren's leadership, the Court actively used Judicial Review to strictly scrutinize and over-turn state and federal statutes, to apply many provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states, and to provide opportunities for those groups in society that had been excluded from the political process. During Warren's tenure, the Court became increasingly liberal and activist, drawing the fire of political and judicial conservatives who believed that the Warren Court had over-stepped its constitutional role and had become a legislative body. The Warren Court itself became a catalyst for change, initiating reforms rather than responding to pressures applied by other branches of government. The Warren Court was committed to the promotion of a libertarian and egalitarian society. The Court used the Strict Scrutiny test of constitutional review to strike down legislation that directly abridged the exercise of fundamental rights or narrowed the number of people who might exercise them and to invalidate legislation that discriminated on the basis of race, religion, and other suspect classifications. Under strict scrutiny, the government has the burden of proving that a compelling state interest exists for the legislation and that the law was narrowly tailored to minimize the restriction on the fundamental right. This burden proved difficult to meet during the Warren Court years, turning the federal courts into institutions that protected the interests of politically unpopular individuals and members of relatively powerless minority groups who had been victimized by pervasive historical, political, economic, and social discrimination. The first major decision of the Warren Court is arguably its most important. In brown v. board of education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 (1954), the Court overruled the 1896 Supreme Court decision of plessy v. ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 16 S. Ct. 1138, 41 L. Ed. 256, which had allowed racially segregated facilities on trains and by implication in public schools. The Court made clear that state-sponsored racial Segregation of public schools was inherently unequal and that it violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Brown decision helped trigger the modern Civil Rights Movement. During the 1960s the Warren Court upheld federal civil right legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C.A. § 2000a et seq.) and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C.A. § 1973 et seq.). The Court struck down state laws that were racially discriminatory, including statutes that forbade racially mixed marriages. The Court applied the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished Slavery, to outlaw all discrimination in the sale and rental of property and in the making of contracts. Apart from upholding the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Warren Court removed impediments to voting by striking down state poll tax and property qualifications, unreasonable residency requirements, and obstacles to putting third political parties on the ballot. The Court also changed the makeup of state legislatures by reversing precedent and agreeing to hear legislative reapportionment cases. In reynolds v. sims, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S. Ct. 1362, 12 L. Ed. 2d 506 (1964), Warren wrote the opinion that has come to be known as the one person, one vote decision. Reynolds and a series of cases that followed forced state legislatures to be apportioned equally on the basis of population rather than geographic areas. Reapportionment based on population resulted in a shift of political power away from sparsely populated rural areas to metropolitan areas. Criminal ProcedureThe Warren Court aroused bitter controversy with its decisions in Criminal Procedure. The Court sought to provide equal justice by providing criminal defendants with an attorney in felony cases if they could not afford one (gideon v. wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S. Ct. 792, 9 L. Ed. 2d 799 [1963]). It also ruled that indigent defendants could not be denied the opportunity to appeal their cases or to participate fully in post-conviction proceedings because of a lack of funds to obtain the necessary transcripts or to hire counsel. The decision in miranda v. arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S. Ct. 1602, 16 L. Ed. 2d 694 (1966), proved to be the Warren Court's most controversial criminal procedure case. The Court required what has come to be known as the Miranda warning: police must inform arrested persons that they need not answer questions and that they may have an attorney present during questioning. In addition, the Court used the Fourteenth Amendment to incorporate federal constitutional rights, thus making them applicable to the states. Using this process, the Court applied the Exclusionary Rule to the states. This meant that evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment could not be used in a criminal prosecution. The Warren Court also applied to the states the federal constitutional right against Cruel and Unusual Punishment in the Eighth Amendment, the Right to Counsel in the Sixth Amendment, the right against compelled Self-Incrimination in the Fifth Amendment, and the rights to confront witnesses and to a jury trial in all criminal cases, which are guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. These decisions radically changed the criminal justice system and generated criticism that the Court had gone too far in protecting the accused. First AmendmentThe Warren Court sought to protect First Amendment rights. It invalidated the Georgia House of Representatives' exclusion of one of its members because of his antiwar and antidraft statements. The Court also attacked vagueness and overbreadth in compulsory loyalty oaths and ruled against the compulsory disclosure of organization memberships. It moved to invalidate attempts in southern states to inhibit the functioning of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), to make public the identities of the organization's members, and to deny its members opportunities for public employment. During the 1960s, the Court upheld the legitimacy of demonstrations at state capitols and in the streets and sit-ins at segregated lunch counters. It also upheld the right of individuals to picket in a privately owned shopping center and the right of high school students to express their opposition to the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands to school. The Warren Court also changed state slander and libel laws that stifled open discussion of controversial issues. It held that persons who are public officials or public figures cannot recover damages in a Defamation action unless they prove that a false statement was made with "actual malice" (with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false). The Court also reviewed many freedom of religion cases, provoking controversy over its interpretation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The Warren Court struck down Bible reading and the reciting of state-written prayers in public schools, even those religious acts done on a voluntary basis. The Court did, however, uphold, with qualifications, state aid to children attending religious schools. As to the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause, the Court sought to protect the rights of religious dissenters and nonconformists when it struck down a Maryland constitutional provision requiring the declaration of a belief in God as a prerequisite to holding public office. It also held that an individual need not believe in a supreme being to be eligible for Conscientious Objector status. Right to PrivacyOne of the most significant rulings of the Warren Court was its recognition of the constitutional right of privacy. In griswold v. connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S. Ct. 1678, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510 (1965), the Court struck down a Connecticut statute that prohibited the dissemination of Birth Control information. In declaring the right of privacy, the Court laid the groundwork for the post–Warren Court decision in roe v. wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147 (1973), which gave women the right to have an Abortion. Further readingsCompston, Christine L. 2002. Earl Warren: Justice for All. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. Horwitz, Morton J. 1999. The Warren Court and the Pursuit of Justice. New York: Farrar, Staus, & Giroux. Krotoszynski, Ronald J., Jr. 2002."A Remembrance of Things Past?: Reflections on the Warren Court and the Struggle for Civil Rights." Washington and Lee Law Review 59 (fall). Lewis, Frederick P. 1999. The Context of Judicial Activism: The Endurance of the Warren Court Legacy in a Conservative Age." Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. Powe, Lucas A. 2001. The Warren Court and American Politics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. Schwartz, Bernard, ed. 1996. The Warren Court: A Retrospective. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. Cross-referencesApportionment; Baker v. Carr; Custodial Interrogation; Equal Protection; Incorporation Doctrine; Libel and Slander; Mapp v. Ohio; New York Times Co. v. Sullivan; Overbreadth Doctrine; School Desegregation; Symbolic Speech; Void for Vagueness Doctrine. West's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Want to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, or visit the webmaster's page for free fun content. Link to this page: <a href="https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Warren+Court">Warren Court</a>
The idea that transborder speech has at best a very weak claim on the First Amendment is of relatively recent vintage and reflects a break with precedents of the Warren Court. To be sure, the Warren Court did not vigorously move to protect transborder speech activity. He would develop a legal process theory that enshrined reason and extolled the Warren Court and the Justices who handed down Brown as "public officials situated within a profession, bounded at every turn by the norms and conventions that define and constitute that profession." (23) He would also become an exponent of legal liberalism, trust in the potential of federal courts, particularly the Warren Court, to produce positive, permanent change for the disempowered. (50) While the appointees of a different president might have been less willing to undercut the Warren Court's criminal procedure decisions than Nixon's appointees were, it is not clear that any Court would have continued, full steam ahead, with the Warren Court agenda on those issues. Tony's genius was not objectivity; he genuinely agreed personally with the substance of what the Warren Court was doing to make the civil rights revolution and the criminal law revolution into constitutional realities. Bork's article began with and focused on a fundamental question: "When is authority legitimate?" The Warren Court, he wrote, had "posed the issue in acute form" because the issue of authority "arises when any court either exercises or declines to exercise the power to invalidate any act of another branch of government." When the Court reviews the constitutionality of legislation, it confronts what Bork later called the "Madisonian Dilemma." The dilemma arises from two competing principles of the American constitutional system: majority rule and minority rights.
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