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Liberals consider Warren's final opinion a political masterwork, not just for his political gamesmanship, but for his general writing, making use of dubious social science research to draw legal conclusions, and laying the groundwork for forced racial busing.
Liberals consider Warren's final opinion a political masterwork, not just for his political gamesmanship, but for his general writing, making use of dubious social science research to draw legal conclusions, and laying the groundwork for forced racial busing.
====Reapportionment====
Warren's priority on fairness shaped other major decisions. In 1962, over the strong objections of Frankfurter, the Court agreed that questions regarding malapportionment in state legislatures were not political issues, and thus were not outside the Court's purview. For years underpopulated rural areas had deprived metropolitan centers of equal representation in state legislatures. In Warren's California, Los Angeles County had only one state senator. Cities had long since passed their peak, and now it was the middle class suburbs that were underepresented. Frankfurter insisted that the Court should avoid this "political thicket" and warned that the Court would never be able to find a clear formula to guide lower courts in the rash of lawsuits sure to follow.
But Douglas found such a formula: "one man, one vote."<ref> James A. Gazell, "One Man, One Vote: Its Long Germination," ''The Western Political Quarterly,'' Vol. 23, No. 3 (Sep., 1970), pp. 445-462 [http://www.jstor.org/pss/446565 in JSTOR]</ref> In the key apportionment case Reynolds v. Sims (1964)<ref> See [http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=377&invol=533 REYNOLDS v. SIMS, 377 U.S. 533 (1964) ]</ref> Warren delivered a civics lesson: "To the extent that a citizen's right to vote is debased, he is that much less a citizen," Warren declared. "The weight of a citizen's vote cannot be made to depend on where he lives. This is the clear and strong command of our Constitution's Equal Protection Clause." Unlike the desegregation cases, in this instance, the Court ordered immediate action, and despite loud outcries from rural legislators, Congress failed to reach the two-thirds needed pass a constitutional amendment. The states complied, reapportioned their legislatures quickly and with minimal troubles. Numerous commentators have concluded reapportionment was the Warren Court's great "success" story.<ref> Robert B. McKay, "Reapportionment: Success Story of the Warren Court." ''Michigan Law Review,'' Vol. 67, No. 2 (Dec., 1968), pp. 223-236 [http://www.jstor.org/pss/1287416 in JSTOR]</ref>
Frankfurter retired and President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] named labor lawyer [[Arthur Goldberg]] to replace him. Goldberg gave Warren the fifth vote for the majority the activists wanted. [[William Brennan]], a liberal Democrat appointed by Eisenhower in 1956, was the intellectual leader of the activist faction that included Black and Douglas. Brennan complemented Warren's political skills with the strong legal skills Warren lacked. Warren and Brennan met before the regular conferences to plan out their strategy.
====Due process revolution====
While most Americans eventually agreed that the Court's desegregation and apportionment decisions were fair and right, disagreement about the "due process revolution" continues today. Warren took the lead in criminal justice. Warren, despite his years as a tough prosecutor, always insisted that the police must play fair or the accused should go free. Warren was privately outraged at what he considered police abuses that ranged from warrantless searches to forced confessions.
Warren’s Court ordered lawyers for indigent defendants, in Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), and prevented prosecutors from using evidence seized in illegal searches, in Mapp v. Ohio (1961). The famous case of Miranda v. Arizona (1966) summed up Warren's philosophy.<ref>See [http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=384&invol=436 MIRANDA v. ARIZONA, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)]</ref> Everyone, even one accused of crimes, still enjoyed constitutionally protected rights, and the police had to respect those rights and uissue a specific warning when making an arrest. Warren did not believe in coddling criminals; this in Terry v. Ohio (1968) he gave police officers leeway to stop and frisk those they had reason to believe held weapons.
Conservatives angrily denounced the "handcuffing of the police."<ref>Ronald Kahn and Ken I. Kersch, eds. ''The Supreme Court And American Political Development'' (2006) [http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0700614397/ref=sib_books_pg?ie=UTF8&keywords=miranda%20%26%2334%3Bcrime%20rates%26%2334%3B&p=S04N&checkSum=%252FyIgYm2ybgibk6P%252BM%252FG9LcucFd6ieUBSkCM%252FVsFiLs0%253D online at p. 442]</ref> Violent crime and homicide rates shot up nationwide; in New York City, for example, after steady to declining trends until the early 1960s, the homicide rate doubled in the period from 1964-74 from just under 5 per 100,000 at the beginning of that period to just under 10 per 100,000 in 1974. After 1992 the homicide rates fell sharply.<ref> Thomas Sowell, ''The Vision of the Anointed: Self-congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy'' (1995) [http://books.google.com/books?id=ISTtFtcIkKAC&pg=PA29&dq=homicide+%22warren+court%22&lr=&num=30&as_brr=0&ei=BvhqSNuHHpOkiwHp99SCBg&sig=ACfU3U2Pv3ET0J8J_NHq2uTqH_GJxcCbDw online at p. 26-29]</ref>
===First Amendment===
The Warren Court's activism stretched into a new turf, especially First Amendment rights. The Court's decision outlawing mandatory school prayer in Engel v. Vitale (1962) brought vehement complaints that echoed into the 21st century.<ref> See [http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=370&invol=421 ENGEL v. VITALE, 370 U.S. 421 (1962) ]</ref>
Warren worked to nationalize the Bill of Rights by applying it to the states. Moreover, in one of the landmark cases decided by the Court, Griswold v. Connecticut (1963), the Warren Court announced a constitutionally protected right of privacy.<ref> See [http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0381_0479_ZS.html Griswold v. Connecticut (No. 496) 151 Conn. 544, 200 A.2d 479, reversed]</ref> No one at the time expected the court, after Warren’s retirement, would use the decision to allow abortion.
With the exception of the desegregation decisions, few decisions were unanimous. The eminent scholar John Marshall Harlan took Frankfurter's place as the Court's self-constraint spokesman, often joined by Potter Stewart and Byron R. White. But with the appointment of Thurgood Marshall, the first black justice, and Abe Fortas (replacing Goldberg), Warren could count on six votes in most cases.
==Warren Commission==
In November 1963 President Johnson demanded in the name of patriotic duty that Warren head the governmental commission that investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It was an unhappy experience for Warren, who did not want the assignment. As a judge, he valued candor and justice, but as a politician he recognized the need for secrecy in some matters. He insisted that the commission report should be unanimous, and so he compromised on a number of issues in order to get all the members to sign the final version. But many conspiracy theorists have attacked the commission's findings ever since, claiming that key evidence is missing or distorted and that there are many inconsistencies in the report.
==Retirement==
In June 1968, Warren, fearing that Nixon would be elected president that year, worked out a retirement deal with President Johnson. Associate Justice [[Abe Fortas]], who was secretly Johnson's top adviser, brokered the deal in which Fortas would become chief justice. The plan was foiled by the Senate, which ripped into Fortas's record and refused to confirm him. In 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 demanded and got Fortas' resignation.<ref>Artemus.Ward, "An Extraconstitutional Arrangement: Lyndon Johnson and the Fall of the Warren Court" ''White House Studies'' 2002 2(2): 171-183 </ref> Warren presided over the Court's October 1968 term and retired in spring 1969; Nixon named Warren E. Burger to succeed him.
Scholars agree that as a judge, Warren does not rank with intellectual giants such as [[Louis Brandeis]], Black, Brennan or [[William Rehnquist]] in terms of jurisprudence. His opinions were not always clearly written, and his legal logic was often muddled. His strength lay in his clear vision that the Constitution embodied natural rights that could not be denied to the citizenry and that the Supreme Court had a special role in protecting those rights.
[[American conservatism|Conservatives]] attacked his judicial activism as inappropriate and have called for courts to be deferential to the elected political branches. Liberals who admit that the Warren Court went too far in some areas, insist that most of its controversial decisions struck a responsive chord in the nation and have become embedded in the law.
==References==
==References==