Word: burger
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...departure of Nixon was, above all, an extraordinary triumph of the American system. The nation is not wrong to permit itself some self-congratulation on that. Just after he had sworn in the new President, Chief Justice Warren Burger grabbed the hand of Senator Hugh Scott, the Government colleague nearest to him. "Hugh," said Burger, "it worked. Thank God, it worked." He meant the system...
...presides over the impeachment trial. Mansfield argued that both precedent and the 1868 rules have compromised the Senate's "sole power to try" the President by giving too much power to the Chief Justice. Some Republicans countered that this rule expressed a Democratic fear that Chief Justice Warren Burger would wield a pro-Nixon gavel...
...Power. For the majority, Chief Justice Warren Burger ruled that the original 1972 Detroit cross-district busing plan was improper because whatever the situation in Detroit itself, the school systems in the surrounding suburbs had not been accused of unlawful segregation. Concluded Burger: "Where the schools of only one district have been affected, there is no constitutional power in the courts to decree relief balancing the racial composition of that district's schools with those of the surrounding districts...
...ruling meant that busing from one community-wide school district to another is not a proper remedy for school segregation in Detroit or, by implication, in any other city. Burger's opinion left one small avenue open to cross-district busing: a court could order it in cases where intentional segregation in one district leads to a "significant segregative effect in another district." One example might be where district lines are clearly and intentionally drawn on the basis of race. Otherwise, Burger argued, school-district boundary lines should not be treated casually by judges because "no single tradition...
...court was bitterly-and significantly-divided over the decision. The majority included all four of the "strict constructionists" appointed by President Nixon-Burger, William Rehnquist, Harry Blackmun and Lewis Powell-plus Potter Stewart, an Eisenhower appointee. They were heatedly opposed by the court's four remaining Warren-era holdovers-William Brennan, Byron White, William Douglas and Thurgood Marshall. White, Douglas and Marshall filed dissenting opinions. Marshall, the court's only black member, described the ruling as "a giant step backward" for the court in the desegregation area. "In the short run," he wrote, "it may seem...