Earl Warren

His father was born Vaare in Stavanger in 1864 and was carried to America at two. His mother came from Hälsingland in Sweden as an infant. They met in Minneapolis and followed a Southern Pacific job to Southern California, and their son got no middle name because, as his father put it, he was too poor to give him one. The family settled in Bakersfield in 1896. Warren was an unremarkable student there and an unremarkable one at Berkeley, where the state admitted him to the bar in 1914 without an examination. He tried to volunteer as an officer in 1917 and was rejected for hemorrhoids, had them removed, missed the training camp, and enlisted as a private instead.

Alameda County's district attorney for 14 years, and by 1931 a national name: a poll of law officers called him the most intelligent and independent prosecutor in the country. Attorney general of California in 1939. Governor in 1943, and in 1946 he took both parties' primaries. He is the only Californian elected governor three times. Eisenhower made him chief justice in 1953 and later called it his worst mistake. The Court, and why Eisenhower said that, are on BriefHistory. What follows is the part he spent 30 years trying to answer for.

After Pearl Harbor he became the most effective public advocate for removing Japanese Americans from the coast. General DeWitt gave the order and federal officials carried it out, but Warren supplied the argument: that ethnic Japanese had infiltrated every strategic spot in the state, that no test existed for their loyalty, and — the line that gives the whole case away — that the complete absence of any disloyal act to date proved they were saving it for later. More than 100,000 people were held without charge. He fought their return to California into 1944. He had also prosecuted a woman for attending a communist meeting, and won murder convictions against four union officials in a killing that union members across the state said his office had manufactured.

Billboards across the Deep South demanded his impeachment after Brown. He retired in 1969, watched Nixon replace him, and said later that if he had known what was coming they would have had to carry him off the bench on a plank. On July 9, 1974, hospitalized with heart failure, he asked Brennan and Douglas whether the Court would make Nixon surrender the tapes. They told him the vote was unanimous. He died that evening. He is buried at Arlington. Conservatives from Bork to Raoul Berger have called his Court a legislature in robes, and the Rehnquist Court that was supposed to undo it never overturned Brown, Miranda, Gideon or Reynolds.

Earl Warren's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Brown v. Board of Education case
  He drafted the eight-page outline and held the Court to nine votes 1954
• Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy book
  The Warren Report, produced in ten months 1964
• Reynolds v. Sims case
  One person, one vote, which redrew state legislatures nationwide 1964
• Miranda v. Arizona case
  The warning most Americans know from television 1966
• Loving v. Virginia case
  Struck down the bans on interracial marriage 1967
• The Memoirs of Earl Warren book
  Published after his death, and the first place he admitted the internment was wrong 1977

• 1914 aged ~23 Takes a law degree at Berkeley and is admitted to the bar without an examination
• August 1917 aged 26 Enlists as a private after being rejected for officer training The disqualifying condition was hemorrhoids. He had them removed and missed the camp.
• 1925 aged ~34 Appointed district attorney of Alameda County He married Nina Meyers, a widowed store manager, that October.
• 1938 aged ~47 His father is murdered at the family home in Bakersfield Investigators never identified the killer.
• January 1942 aged 50 Warns that Japanese Americans are the Achilles heel of civilian defense He became the leading public advocate for removing more than 100,000 people without charge.
• 1946 aged ~55 Wins both the Republican and the Democratic primaries for governor He went on to become the only Californian elected governor three times.
• October 10, 1953 aged 62 Takes his seat as the 14th chief justice of the United States Eisenhower had expected a reliable conservative.
• June 23, 1969 aged 78 Leaves the bench, replaced by Nixon's choice of Warren Burger He said afterward that he regretted going.
• July 9, 1974 aged 83 Dies hours after learning the Court had voted unanimously against Nixon on the tapes

• Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890–1969
  34th President and Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II. appointed by
• Richard Nixon 1913–1994
  37th President whose foreign policy achievements were overshadowed by the Watergate scandal. rival
• Hugo Black 1886–1971
  Justice who championed strong First Amendment protections and incorporation of the Bill of Rights. led the Court alongside
• Thurgood Marshall 1908–1993
  First African American Supreme Court Justice and lead attorney in Brown v. Board of Education. argued Brown before him
• John Marshall 1755–1835
  Chief justice who established judicial review and strengthened the Supreme Court and federal government. measured against
• Upton Sinclair 1878–1968
  Novelist whose expose of Chicago meatpacking spurred federal food and drug inspection laws. opposed as a candidate for governor