Word: warrens
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Hearts and Minds. Earl Warren was recently asked what he considered his most crucial decisions. Each of the cases that he singled out represented one of the three broad fields in which his court wrought the greatest change: legislative apportionment, civil rights, and the rights of criminal defendants. The three cases...
Sphere of Iron. Appointed by President Eisenhower in 1953 after three terms as Governor of California, Earl Warren joined a court that was dominated by two more penetrating thinkers than he, Hugo Black and Felix Frankfurter. In his initial years, says Columbia Government Professor Alan Westin, the new Chief Justice was "a large, powerful sphere of iron drawn between two magnetic potes." Initially, he leaned toward Frankfurter, the ex-Harvard professor who argued brilliantly for a more restrained role for the court. But eventually Warren, more a man of action than reflection, found Black's judicial activism preferable...
...Warren made an imprint on the court largely because of the strong moral direction that he imparted to it. A man of stern humanitarian ideals, he loomed on the bench as a kind of Old Testament lawgiver, who approached issues with a disarming simplicity. "You'd see this paterfamilias insisting on the justice of the black man's cause," noted Michael Meltsner, a young lawyer for the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund, who has argued before the Warren court. "Almost every question was directed toward justice, not technicalities...
...Good Enough. Under intensifying attack in recent years, the Warren court continued, nevertheless, to enlarge, clarify and insist upon its previous rulings. To hasten school desegregation in one Alabama county this year, the court found it necessary to uphold a racial quota requiring each school to have at least one black for every five white teachers and staff members. The court also proclaimed during the recent session that approximate equality in voting districts was not good enough, and that the states must strive to achieve absolute equality in the population of each district...
...some legal scholars, the most notable characteristic of the Warren court -and one that may distinguish it from Burger's-was its decision to decide. Perhaps no case better illustrates the difference than that of barred Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, in which the War, ren court reversed a decision by Burger's former court. As a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Burger had written in the Powell case: "Courts encounter some problems for which they can supply no solution." Later he remarked: "What if we ordered the House to seat Powell...