The U. S. Supreme Court experienced a profound transformation from the 1950s to the 1960s. Appointed chief justice by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953 to replace Fred Vinson, Earl Warren presided over a court that protected civil liberties for all citizens in many different areas of law.
The court Warren led was initially composed of many pre-World War II liberals, such as Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, Stanley Reed, and Robert Jackson, as well as moderates and conservatives such as Harold Burton, Sherman Minton, and Tom Clark. The composition changed drastically when six of these seats were vacated by death and retirement in the 1950s and 1960s. Justice Robert Jackson vacated the first seat in 1954, which was filled by John Harlan, a justice who served from 1955-71, while the conservative Sherman Minton’s seat was vacated and filled in 1956 by William J. Brennan, who served from 1956-90. Following Minton’s replacement, Stanley Reed’s seat was vacated and filled first by Charles Whittaker, who served from 1957-62, and then by Byron White who served from 1962-93. Moreover, the court changed again in 1958 when Harold Burton’s seat was vacated and filled by Potter Stewart, a rigid conservative, who served until 1981.
The composition of the Warren Court shifted again during the administrations of presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, when new members were selected based upon their support for each president’s social reform agenda. When Felix Frankfurter suffered a debilitating stroke in 1962, Kennedy appointed Arthur Goldberg to fill the seat. When Johnson called Goldberg to fill the vacant ambassadorship left in the United Nations by
Adlai Stevenson’s death, Abe Fortas took his place and served until 1969. Lyndon Johnson was also responsible for replacing Tom Clark in 1967 with civil rights activist Thur-good Marshall, who served until 1991.
One area of law that was affected by the Warren Court was civil rights. Southern states in the early 1950s insisted on a social norm dictating the general inferiority of African Americans who suffered serious and pervasive discrimination. The segregated social order came under attack in the Brown v. Board of Education case that began in 1951, when Linda Brown of Topeka, Kansas, and other black children questioned whether they could attend an all-white segregated school. When the opinion for Brown v. Board of Education was announced as a 9-0 unanimous majority, the nine men declared the “separate but equal” doctrine unconstitutional.
The Warren Court is remembered for its groundbreaking precedents in the protection of civil rights as well as civil liberties in criminal procedure. Cases such as Escobedo v. Illinois (1964) and Miranda v. Arizona (1966) reflect a trend within the liberal consensus of the Court to deter all police misconduct and eliminate any unfair prosecution or conviction that may result. This was apparent in Escobedo when a confession of murder was excluded because the Sixth Amendment right to counsel was never granted to the defendant. In Miranda, the Court ruled that the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination restricted police interrogation of a suspect under arrest.
Biased apportionment of electoral districts prevailed throughout the nation and effectively diluted voting power. In Baker v. Carr (1962), the issue centered on questionable apportionment of state legislature seats that ignored significant economic growth and population shifts within the state of Tennessee. The Court ruled that federal courts had the jurisdiction to scrutinize legislative apportionments. In a similar case, Reynolds v. Sims (1964), the Warren Court held that representation in state legislatures must be based on population rather than geographical areas so that legislatures represented people and not simply acres of land.
Engel v. Vitale (1962) was decided by the Warren Court, angering conservatives for its ban of prayer in school. The Court decided that authorization of a nondenominational, voluntary prayer by the New York Board of Regents violated the “establishment of religion” clause of the First Amendment because the state of New York officially approved the prayer.
By the time Chief Justice Earl Warren retired in 1969, the Supreme Court had undergone a major shift that lasted through the next generation. Not until conservatives assumed electoral power and began to change the composition of the liberal court was there an effective challenge to the changes made.
Further reading: L. A. Scot Powe, The Warren Court and American Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000); Mark Tushnet, The Warren Court in Historical and Political Perspective (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993).
—John E. Bibish IV
World History
