The Big Four Decisions of the Warren Court

[Sun Devil 92]

While most Americans have generally agreed that the Court's desegregation and apportionment decisions were fair and just, disagreement about the "due process revolution" continues to this day. Applauded and criticized for using judicial power in a dramatic fashion, Warren's approach was most effective when the political institutions had defaulted on their responsibility to address problems.

I've talked with a lot of "most Americans" and have found that after about 15 minutes and a little perspective, they are not so quick to agree.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

“The 14th amendment has always been a great skirt for the left and left wing courts to hide under.” ... “The court stuck it's nose in states business (Warren again hiding under the skirt of the 14th).” ... “They should dig his ass up, shoot it and burn what's left.”

This is not Supreme Court history but simply your displaying ignorance and “supremely” subjective opinion.

First of all the interpretation of the 14th Amendment, written precisely to protect African American rights after the Civil War and Emancipation, has not “always been a great skirt for the left and left wing Courts to hide under” ... quite the opposite.

In even just the first serious study detailing all 604 14th Amendment cases brought before the Supreme Court from 1868 to 1913 it was shown that only 5% had anything to do with African American rights, and virtually all these went against them. This continued of course for many more decades as Jim Crow continued. In fact, more than half the 14th Amendment cases were brought by private corporations — more and more accepted as “legal persons” — and they succeeded in strengthening their rights, striking down state laws including minimum wage, zoning laws, child labor laws, etc. Of course corporate rights successes didn’t stop in 1913 either. It is true that corporations growing power in the “Gilded Age” led to much “populist” and “progressive” resistance, that the “right,” “Conservatives” and corporations didn’t win all their cases, but they had the money and lawyers (and many judges in their pockets) and kept bringing cases ... while Jim Crow continued.

Your sweeping statements about “the left” and “leftwing courts” are ridiculous. Southern white politicians of course criticized the 14th Amendment for racist reasons right after the war, and there certainly were “procedural errors” made during the Civil War and right after, but after the Compromise of 1877 and the later Plessy Supreme Court ratification of Jim Crow some two decades later, “conservatives” really only needed to defend “states rights” in the courts when fighting against outside corporate power. Only much later did they, as in the early post-bellum period, renew their attacks on the Supreme Court’s finally more reasonable interpretations of the 14th Amendment under the Chief Justice Warren, who now used it as it was meant ... to defend African American and other “real person” liberties against Jim Crow, disenfranchisement, anti-miscegenation laws, etc.

Your “amazement” that judges should consider what is “good for the country” shows both moral indifference and incredible naïveté — as this was often accepted in earlier periods when corporate rights were being expanded.

Your reference to “The Case Against the Supreme Court” by Erwin Chemerinsky also makes no sense whatever to me, since his was a liberal critique of Supreme Court failures, attacking the power of big business control over the courts, Citizen’s United, etc.

 

[Disir]

Earl Warren was the only man to apologize for his supporting role in the Japanese interment. It took me a good bit (several years) to reconcile that this man wound up in the Supreme Court and the led the investigation into JFK's assassination. I don't find his time in California to be worthy of praise.

What I found interesting about the impact of Brown v the Board of Education is that years later, after Swann V Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, there were interviews of people that had lived through that time period. They had wanted lab equipment, text books etc. not the loss of their teachers. The white schools were not going to hire the African-American teachers. Of course there was the send the black kids to the white schools so the white rubs off on them.