The Warren Court
The hippies and others who disliked authority and tradition had help from our court system, and particularly from the "Warren Court." Just as an "Administration" is named after the president at the time (e.g., the "Truman Administration"), a period of time on the Supreme Court is named after the person who was the Chief Justice at the time (e.g., the "Warren Court" refers the Supreme Court years when Earl Warren was Chief Justice).
Earl Warren was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1953 based on a political bargain with President Eisenhower. When Eisenhower was in a close race for the Republican nomination for president in 1952 (against the more conservative Robert Taft), Warren was governor of California and promised the support of the California delegation to Eisenhower if he would promise to appoint Warren to fill the first vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. By chance, that first vacancy in 1953 (after Eisenhower was elected president) was the position of Chief Justice, and Warren threatened to speak out against Eisenhower if he did not honor the deal. Eisenhower then appointed him. Warren then became the most "activist" Chief Justice in the history of the Court.
In fact, Chief Justice Earl Warren was probably the most powerful person in all of American politics during his service from 1953 to 1969. The Warren Court was an "activist court," extending judicial powers into areas where it previously showed restraint. For example, the Warren Court applied the Bill of Rights against the States, despite their clear language and intent to apply only against the federal government. On a more controversial level, the Warren Court expanded the power of the Supreme Court and invented many new constitutional rights, while denying the rights of teachers and students to begin class with a prayer.
The Warren Court is most famous for holding in favor of criminals and restricting the power of law enforcement in dealing with crime. Three examples of Warren Court decisions in this field are:
Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), requiring States to provide and pay for a defense attorney for any defendant charged with a felony (a felony is a serious crime, as opposed to a minor offense like a traffic ticket).
Escobedo v. Illinois (1964): requiring police to provide a suspect with a lawyer, at taxpayer expense, during police interrogation, if the suspect requests one.
Miranda v. Arizona (1966), establishing strict standards for how police may ask questions of suspects, requiring the police first to recite this "Miranda warning": you have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be held against you, you have a right to an attorney, and an attorney will be appointed for you if you cannot afford one.
Debate: Do you think criminal suspects are entitled to these new rights?
The greatest damage done by the Warren Court was probably its decision banning official school prayer in public school, which had existed for hundreds of years. The Lord's Prayer was being said daily in New Jersey public schools, for example, which many students' grandparents might recall. In Engel v. Vitale (1962), the Warren Court prohibited this and public schools have been declining ever since; some consider this decision to have been the worst since the Dred Scott decision just before the Civil War.
Liberal Justice Hugo Black, who became known for his judicial hostility to religion and his pro-pornography rulings, wrote the Engel v. Vitale decision and cited only one precedent (prior judicial authority) in it: a previous decision Justice Black himself had written (Everson v. Board of Education). A study published by U.S. News & World Report found that in 71 cases before the Supreme Court concerning communists, Justice Black held in favor of the communists every single time.[7] Hugo Black had been a Democratic U.S. Senator before he was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Less well known, but also influential, were the deceptively named "one man, one vote" decisions by the Warren Court, which interfered with the structure of state legislatures. Since the ratification of the Constitution, States had their own legislatures that were modeled after Congress, with one chamber or body based on population (like the House), and the other based on geography (like the Senate). This worked well for over 150 years. But the Warren Court decided it did not like that structure, even though Congress uses it. In Baker v. Carr (1962) and Reynolds v. Sims (1964), the United States Supreme Court ruled that state legislative districts must be redrawn to be equal in population, and natural geographic lines caused by rivers or county lines should be ignored in order to draw legislative districts equal in population. The Warren Court held that both state legislatures and all their legislative districts must be based on equal populations of voters, which it expected would have a liberal effect by giving cities greater influence. The result is difficult-to-understand and ever-changing district boundaries (due to population shifts) that render most citizens unaware of who their representatives really are. The Warren Court could not change the structure of Congress because it is expressly established by the U.S. Constitution.
The Warren Court was "activist" in additional ways. It established a precedent that the government may take private property from one person and give it to another, which had previously never been allowed under the doctrine of eminent domain. Before this ruling, eminent domain was limited to the taking of private property for public use, such as building a road or government building. This decision was Berman v. Parker (1954) and it approved the taking of many privately owned homes in D.C. in order to convert the property into a new development of stores.
The Warren Court invalidated many state and local laws that protected society against the evil of pornography and its terrible emotional and mental effects on those victimized by it, and addicted to it. The harm caused by pornography to the mind lasts for a long time afterward, because images are so difficult to forget, and pornography causes many horrible crimes in society. Pornography had been illegal, but in the late 1960s the Warren Court declared it to be "free speech" protected by the First Amendment, even though the First Amendment was never intended to protect such harmful images. Between 1966 and 1970, the Warren Court rendered 34 unsigned decisions (unsigned decisions are unusual) in favor of pornographers, overturning laws and lower court decisions. Law enforcement officers note that pornography is typically found in the homes of criminals.
Other decisions of the Warren Court, such as its ruling on segregated schools and invention of a new "right to privacy," are discussed in other sections of this course.