From 1953-1969, Earl Warren served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Under his leadership, the Court issued a series of extremely controversial opinions on constitutional issues. During that era, the Court revolutionized the constitutional landscape by ruling in favor of equal rights. Warren Court decisions included Brown v Board of Education (1954), Miranda v Arizona (1966), Mapp v Ohio (1961), and Engel v Vitale (1962). Perhaps among the most controversial rulings of the decade were those defining the rights of criminal defendants (1). It was a time of judicial activism that gave hope to many marginalized communities, yet despair for strict constitutionalists.
As one could imagine, the reaction against such a broad interpretation of the constitution was intense. There was a strong “law-and-order” backlash building in the late 1960s as fears of crime, gun violence, and urban unrest swept the nation. Many saw the Warren Court’s decisions such as Miranda v Arizona (which required police to read suspects their rights upon arrest) a contributing factor in a surge in crime rates. Not to mention, the public found such weak-on-crime decisions as crippling to law enforcement officers, who could not adequately detain criminals under the new Court provisions. (2)
In response, President Nixon ran his campaign with the promise to reinstate Supreme Court Justices who would “see their duty as interpreting the law and not making the law.” (3) Among one of the most staunch opponents of Warren Jurisprudence was a Judge named Warren Burger. President Nixon took note of Burger’s adamant disapproval of the Court’s expansion of rights to criminal defendants. (4) Therefore, President Nixon appointed Warren Burger as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The President did so with high hopes and a specific intention: to roll back the judicial activism of the prior decade. (5)
The President expected the Burger Court to be a sort of “counterrevolution” against the Warren “revolution” (6). However, the Burger Court quickly became an active participant in a political battle over policy differences. (7) The Burger Court failed to overturn the landmark cases of its predecessor and instead legalized abortion, upheld affirmative action, and contributed to further civil rights advances.
The Burger Court proved too fractious and pragmatic to provide an ideological counterweight to the Warren Court as President Nixon had initially hoped. Many scholars see the tenure of the Burger Court as “seriously flawed” as it issued a series of ideological opinions that went beyond the debate of individual rights and liberties (8)
Footnotes: (1) Schwartz, Bernard, ed. 1998. The Burger Court : Counter-Revolution or Confirmation?. Cary: Oxford University Press, Incorporated. Accessed May 7, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central. (2)Shwartz, The Burger Court p. 1-7 (3) “History of the Burger Court,”The Supreme Court Writing Database, last modified2020.http://supremecourtopinions.edu (4)Shwartz, The Burger Court p. 1-7 (5)Shwartz, The Burger Court p. 1-7 (6)Shwartz, The Burger Court p. 1-7 (7)Shwartz, The Burger Court p. 314 (8)Shwartz, The Burger Court p. 315