'Impeach Earl Warren'-a history lesson

[n2doc]

'Impeach Earl Warren'
Posted at 11:30 am CDT
Michael Tackett
Tribune Washington Bureau Chief

WASHINGTON -- It's still quite easy to remember the billboards that dotted the South in the 1960s with the common message: Impeach Earl Warren. The chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was a pariah to a lot of Southern whites because the court he led so fundamentally changed their way of life. More than three decades after Warren's death, the high court prepares to open its new term on the first Monday of October, and it could well represent the start of a conservative alternative to the years Warren occupied the court's center seat. Warren was the kind of "activist judge" that Republicans have so effectively demonized, at least since the Reagan era. From the moment he joined the court and fashioned a unanimous decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, the first of many historic civil rights rulings, Warren and his court often took steps that neither Congress nor the White House would.

snip:
In his deeply researched new biography, "Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made," author Jim Newton, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, provides insight and a timely reminder into the character of the most consequential justice of the last half-century. Warren was a durable Republican from California who was supported in the decidedly conservative editorial pages of the Los Angeles Times in his many successful election campaigns, most notably his three terms as governor. He was so popular he once won both the Republican and Democratic primary in the state, and his political potential was seen as limitless. He clearly eyed the White House and somewhat grudgingly agreed to be Thomas Dewey's running mate in the 1948 presidential election. By 1952, many saw him as a front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. And he might well have won if not for the somewhat surprise entry of Dwight Eisenhower in the race during a time of war with North Korea. Eisenhower, Newton writes, had a consolation prize in mind for Warren, namely to be solicitor general with an assurance that he would be considered for the first opening on the Supreme Court. The day Eisenhower was to make that appointment official, Chief Justice Fred Vinson died.

That single act changed history's course.

snip:
As Newton persuasively writes, it was Warren's political skills, more than his legal scholarship, that made him effective. Those skills underscored the notion that it is not necessarily a bad thing to have a politician on the court, someone who has made decisions that affect people's lives and stood before them on Election Day to have those decisions validated. Given the polarized climate of today, Earl Warren would have no chance of being nominated for the high court. His party's nominees don't mention him by name, but they speak of "activist judges" with contempt and promise to avoid them. But activism is a coin with two sides. Conservatives can be just as activist in scaling back the law as Warren was in expanding it.

John Roberts seems to share Warren's people skills and his ability to win over his colleagues. But unlike Warren, Roberts will not surprise or disappoint Bush and conservatives. There will be no billboards about him in the South.

link: (reg req'd)
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_theswamp/2006/09/impeach_earl_wa.html#more

[ewagner]

1. I've got to get the book

I grew up in the south and well remember those "Impeach Earl Warren" billboards. I remember distinctly a 7th grade history teacher telling us that "we" may have to "rise to arms again" because of the unholy Warren Courty.

Whew!

I can't believe I walked that road and still ended up here...........