Customer Reviews

Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made

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Earl Warren's is a biography that pays revisiting, especially now that the political center he represented is so thin and the political virtues he practiced so derided. He was an uncomplicated, direct, and plain-spoken man who nevertheless, as Chief Justice, produced astonishing results. Brown vs. the Board of Education provided the essential legal fulcrum of the Civil Rights movement that transformed America in the last half of the 20th century. Perhaps this simplicity and clear vision was the key to his effectiveness.

How to explain the contradictions in Warren's life? Eisenhower was famously unhappy with his appointee. Warren, as Chief Justice, took positions that contradicted what Warren himself, as a District Attorney and Governor, had in fact practiced. No wonder Ike was pole-axed by the Chief Justice he got. The answer seems to be that Warren focused on using the tools each office provided to advance a consistent philosophy, equal justice for all.

Also interesting is the counterpoint and interplay of the careers of Warren and Richard Nixon. Nixon plainly drafted in Warren's wake and converted to the uses of his ambition political capital Warren had accumulated, especially when he crawled over Warren's presidential ambitions to secure the nomination as Vice-President. Yet two politicians were never more dissimilar than Warren and Nixon, the one open, natural, sociable, and comfortable in his skin, the other so contrived and fabricated as to stand for the least likely politician in recent history. But Nixon feigned the virtues Warren possessed in abundance: another way he drafted in Warren's wake. When Nixon hid lies and inconsistencies behind prefaces that he was about to make things "perfectly clear," he aped only Warren's political prose, not Warren's philosophy.

Jim Newton is a writer Warren would have enjoyed talking to and might have hired as a speechwriter. His prose is direct and his explanations of otherwise thorny and obscure legal issues easily penetrable. Warren deserves a better and grander reputation than he has merited at the hands of the neo-conservatives who have taken over the Court and Court punditry. Newton is an able advocate for a reappraisal. Warren did much more good for the county than serve as the exemplar of evil judicial activism. Absent Warren would Clarence Thomas today be on the Supreme Court? Perhaps the only irony of Warren's career is that so few followed in his footsteps, but so many neo-Nixons are still drafting in his wake.

Earl Warren stands over the American twentieth century like few other figures. As an odd proof for this statement, my Exhibit A is Roe v. Wade.

The "Warren Court" became so noted for judicial liberality and activism that any Supreme Court decisions which seemed to expand civil rights quickly became associated with it. So many decisions "created" rights for each citizen (such as the imputed "right" to privacy).

However, it was the Burger Court, not the Warren Court, that decided Roe v. Wade. This book points that out, but it also offers many other qonderful insights into Earl Warren.

His leadership style and ability is best characterized by "doggedness." Very often, he achieved Court majorities (and in many cases unanimous decisions) by sheer persistence with his colleagues. Jim Newton speculates that this is because of his Swedish ethnic heritage.

I regard that as an invidious stereotype. I'd prefer to think that Warren's drive came from an innate and constant spirit to struggle for what is right, regardless of prevailing sentiment and political obstacles.

What the book offers great appreciation for is how our society could have looked if Warren had never existed. Warren's court upheld the 1964 Civil Rights Act and so much other civil rights era legislation. There were strong legal arguments against this expansion of federal power, yet few today, in hindsight, would argue that we'd have been better off without the federal government's role in civil rights.

It's a great book about a great man.

I rarely give a 5-star review on a book. This one gets one for a stack of reasons.

When I finish a biography, I ask myself if I feel like I know the person. I feel I know Warren.

Another reason to like this book, it makes no bones about Warren's bad decisions, his support of the uprooting of Japanese in California in 1941. The author is not shy about criticizing Earl Warren.

Finally, I am a layman. It is a tough task to explain complex legal decisions to a non-lawyer. But Newton does it quite well.

One other thought: After all the learning I did by reading this book, it makes me quite critical of any and all the "teachers" I had in government and American History. They could not teach a politician to steal.

Jim Newton's biography of Earl Warren, "Justice for All", is a comprehensive and richly written book about one of the great Chief Justices in our nation's history. Warren, a moderately conservative man in temperament, style and often idea, led the Court through one of the most tumultuous times in recent memory. Revered and reviled as he might have been, his legacy is certainly one of notable accomplishments and Newton captures it well.

The author presents Earl Warren in a generally favorable light, reminding us of some of his catastrophic decisions, too....especially his support for the internment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. For a moderate, almost non-partisan Republican, Warren had terrific success as governor of California propelling him into the national limelight with only one real political miscalculation of consequence...his agreeing to be Thomas Dewey's Vice Presidential running mate in 1948. Here begins the real fascinating part of Newton's book...politics. Whether it was Earl Warren's tenure as governor, or later dealing with the many presidents he knew or the intricacies of the personalities on the Court, Newton is terrific at describing political process. As Warren was a Republican it was interesting to read that the three Republicans he knew who were or would become president...Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford....were ones with whom Warren had the most troubles. (The descriptions of Richard Nixon add some good humor to the book!) The Chief Justice thought the most highly of President Kennedy, we learn, and he at least got along reasonably well with Lyndon Johnson.

There are many court cases, of course, cited in this book. They are fascinating to read about, especially how often slim majorities hung in the balance, finally decided by Earl Warren's persuasive powers. Newton speaks a great deal about Warren's family and this is much to his credit...so often in these biographies families are put on the back shelf. Here, they are front and center. If I had one small negative thing to say it would be that as the book progresses the author's fondness for his subject becomes much more apparent. "Justice for All" never approaches a hagiography, but occasionally it appears headed in that direction. Other than that, Jim Newton has written a superlative book and I highly recommend it for two reasons....to remind those of us who remember Earl Warren of his towering presence as Chief Justice and for those too young to remember him but who want to learn more.

This book brought back a lot of memories for me - Warren as our Attorney General who sent the Japanese to the camps in 1942, as our Governor for 11 years, a good governor, a decent man, well respected, pretty much middle of the road with good appointments, my old friend Bill Sweigert being one of them. Earl Warren at Isle Aves in the Bohemian Grove in the early sixties, or in the sorority houses for lunch before a Cal game in the forties, a large genial man, unprepossessing, pleasant.

Then too there are the memories of the sixties when the "Warren Court" was the bane of the conservatives and "Impeach Earl Warren" signs were abundant in California, particularly in the Los Angeles area and in the South where the end of segregation had not yet been accepted, when we were shocked by some of its decisions restricting recognized police procedures. The Court did, as they said, "go too far into `freeing' the bad guys". I remember being particularly upset by two decisions - Roth and New York Times v Sullivan - which I felt then (and still feel) went too far in freeing the press from any reasonable responsibility for pornography or slander or libel. Particularly shocking was Griswold v Connecticut where, in a passage which will live as the high-watermark of judicial doublespeak, Justice Douglas found that the Bill of Rights had "penumbras" from which flowed "emanations' wherein could be found a right of privacy embedded in the Bill of Rights. And he found it , thus setting the stage for Roe v Wade a year or so later - a decision which almost every constitutional scholar now believes was wrongly decided and which set off a divisive national controversy which has split the country for forty years.

All this and much more is in this remarkable, well researched, highly readable 525 page biography written by Jim Newton a seasoned reporter for the Los Angeles Times and the former long time head of its Editorial Board. I had not realized what a dominating figure Earl Warren was to twentieth century of American politics - in fact how influential he as been over-all in the formation of our society. I can think of no Justice apart from Chief Justice Marshall who has been more of an influence in he Court. Nor can I think of a President - apart from Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and maybe Andrew Jackson - who has been a greater influence on American society. History will view him as truly one of our "greats". But he didn't start that way.

Earl Warren was first and foremost a Californian. He was born to working class parents in Los Angeles in 1891 and died in 1974 a age 83 in Washington where, far from California, he lies honored in Arlington Cemetery as a World War I soldier and one of the greatest of the great Americans.

His was a rather mundane career until he became Governor in 1942. He had an undistinguished career at the University of California and Boalt Law School, had been an infantryman without combat in the War, tried private practice briefly, didn't like it and then in the twenties went into the District Attorney's office in Oakland. He became a respected District Attorney, served several terms, became well known in Republican circles but to the end of his days remained a prosecutor, but a fair one. You don't have to be a tyrant to be a prosecutor. The essence of prosecution is to be fair. This differs from the essence of the defense, which is to get the best deal. possible for a guilty client. Fairness has nothing to do with it.

He was Attorney General of California from 1938-42 and then served three terms as Governor, being selected as Chief Justice of he United States by President Eisenhower in 1953, three years into his third term as Governor.

I don't think this brief review is the place to touch on all that he did as Governor or as Chief Justice. That's why you should read the book. Suffice it to say that he proved to be as collaborative as Chief Justice as he was as Governor. He was always a consensus builder, a talent without which we might not be where we are today.

His accomplishments? His Court ended racial segregation (Brown v Board of Education of Topeka Kansas), almost as important a decision as Marbury v Madison. The country can't segregate public facilities, nor can it reapportion or redistrict or gerrymander geography so as to deny blacks equal representation (Boynton v Virginia, Baker v Carr.) Every man has one vote (Wesberry v Sabdes). You can' have race-based elections (Gemellion).

His Court severely limited the then current police practices - too
much so in the opinion of many, including mine. A policeman can't stop a car or a person for questioning without reason to suspect that person of unlawful behavior by articulable evidence - not a hunch - real evidence (Terry v Ohio), nor may he question the person about a crime without a proper warning (Miranda). In fact the person doesn't even have to talk to him, He has a right to remain silent (Escobedo). Once the person has counsel, the police can't talk to him at all (Massiah). The person has a right to counsel, and if the defendant is indigent one must be provided (Gideon v Wainwright) and you can't have him in a lineup without counsel. (US v Wade). He has a right to a transcript and to counsel on appeal (Griffin v Illinois). Most importantly he cannot be subject to an unlawful search; and evidence found in such a search is not admissible against him at trial (Mapp v Ohio). (This ruling is, I think, the most hurtful to the prosecution of any of the Warren Court rulings because it has led to countless dismissals of obviously guilty persons and a myriad of decisions on the subject plus incentivizing police perjury in trying to avoid the consequences of an obviously unlawful search. For example "He consented to open the car" etc. etc.)

Then there are the decisions on fee speech, liberalizing the laws against pornography (Roth) and, most importantly in my opinion immunizing the press from libel in almost every circumstance where a public person is involved - and almost anyone who is the subject of a news article can be called a "public person" (New York Times v Sullivan). Sullivan held that a free press was immunized form suit for defamation of libel unless the plaintiff proved "actual malice" which could be equated either to knowledge of the falsity of the story or a reckless disregard of investigation. Either way the decision has polluted our media with nuanced or outright untruths.

Warren dominated the Court during his 16 years (1953-69) as Chief Justice, Always fair, always calm, always adroit he forged consensus among brilliant, independent men - men who had been intellectually blooded at the highest levels of academia or government and who rarely brooked any opinion other than their own. Yet he moulded them by personality, reason and calm judgment into a majority which followed his lead. Rarely was he in the minority.

In doing this he revolutionized our society in ways we tend to forget or overlook because society as now changed has generally accepted the changes. We would never go back to the way it was in 1953, nor could we. We could never go back to segregation. We could never abide a defendant's being convicted without representation, without, a fair trial or by misconduct on the part of the police or the prosecutors. (In fact most of us have forgotten how the criminal courts operated before the Warren Court changed all that.) Nor will we be restrained in our speech, on what we can watch, or where we can vote - or even if we can vote, being black.

None of this was done without protest - by the South, by the John Birch Society, by the religious right, by millions of people who considered themselves "conservative". (I was never one of them) But now- by and large - most of us have come around to accept the way things are.

However laudable the changes have been there is a troubling aspect to the way in which they came to be. Huge societal changes were imposed by decree upon the American people without any public participation. By the stoke of a pen agreed upon by nine elderly men one quarter of our nation was enfranchised, given rights they had never had had before and three fourths of the nation was ordered under penalty of imprisonment to accept them as equals. This was judicial legislation, pure and simple - judicial activism - freighted, to be sure, with the best of intentions, but nevertheless passed without a peep of citizen input.

But what about next time? What restraint is there on the reach of a supreme court Decision? Should there be any? Should we always assume that the nine men and women of the Court really have the best interests of the Country at heart and will avoid any action or decree which will imperil or society or our economy or our liberties? Or that they are not acting with self interest as opposed to the larger interest of the country?

I have two answers to this troubling question.
The short answer is that there is no type of restraint, short of a Constitutional Amendment of some sort, which could be imposed without having the "restrainer" - be it Congress or the Executive - subject to the same concern. Examples: Congress' Court Packing scheme of 1934; Andrew Jackson's defiance of the Court in 1835 ("Now they have acted; let them enforce it")

A longer answer is that popular democracy by its very nature must and does rely in the final analysis on the good sense of the people of the United States; and the people of the United States have almost always demonstrated good sense when faced with serious problems of an institutional or Constitutional nature. They are not going to devalue the Supreme Court as one of the three co-equal branches of government. Furthermore, each of the branches of our Government - The Legislative, Executive and Judicial - have tended to right themselves, to purge themselves either voluntarily or by public pressure over time, the one possible exception being Congress. So while one may cringe at the nonsense written by Mr. Justice Douglas, the Court is essential and this book convinces the reader of that fact and of the fact that Warren was a truly great man - one of our greatest.

Unfortunately many contemporary talented historian write social policy and other sociological aspects of our society causing them to avoid old fashioned political history and biographies. Fortunately there are journalist like Jim Newton who have stepped in to fill the void.

Earl Warren and the Nation He Made is the story of a man that changed much of American life. It tells his personal story, the story of California for most of the 1st half of the 20th century and the story of the Supreme Court.

This book is well written and extremely readable. The first chapter is a sort of a "teaser", starting with the story of Warren's appointment to the court. While it really got me interested in the book, I found my self returning to the first chapter when the time came in the story to relate the events surrounding the appointment. Since the author did not repeat the political manuvering surround the appointment I felt there was a void at that point in the story.

Richard Nixon clearly does not fair well in the story.

One minor point, in discussing Brown v. Board of Education, the author refers to the plaintiff Oliver Brown and his daughter Cheryl Brown who was denied admission to a white school. The minor child of Oliver Brown, was Linda Brown.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in American history, the history of the Supreme Court of the history of a great American.

An interesting and compelling read, providing great insight to the complications of Earl Warren. A must for anyone who enjoys American or California history, or the Law.

Newton's admiration comes through on almost every page so it is important to state that upfront. This book, however, is easily one of the best written about a Supreme Court figure and the best written about the former Chief Justice.

I had long considered William O. Douglas to be the most interesting Supreme Court judge. After reading this, I am convinced Warren is the more compelling of the two because he lived not only one life but three -- and all were incredibly important to the United States and to future generations. Newton covers everything from his years as a son (to a father who was later murdered), a leading prosecutor, a governor, a presidential contender, to a justice on the top court; he does so in a way that is concise yet fully illuminating.

I grew up in a neighborhood and a time when "Impeach Earl Warren" signs were common. As an engaged teenager I closely followed the changing legal landscape of the late fifties and early sixties as the Warren Court rearranged the legal landscape and with it the social order of our nation in the areas of civil rights, criminal justice, freedom of speech, privacy and the role of religion in public schools. Even today as a practicing attorney I admit to strong philosophical disagreements with some of the Warren Court decisions. Having said that, Jim Newton has produced a masterpiece in his book "Justice for All."

First, this book is a marvelous biography of one of the most notorious men of the 20th century. From humble beginnings in the dusty backwater of a turn of the century Bakersfield, California to Chief Justice of perhaps the most influential court in the world, Earl Warren's story is compelling. In addition you are treated to a wonderful and readable history of California politics in the first half of the 20th Century, a time of unparalleled opportunity, growth and change in the Golden State. That alone is worth the read.

Nevertheless, the real gold nuggets of this book lie in its recounting of the internal politics of decision making within the court, as Chief Justice Earl Warren, guided not so much by legal principle but by what he perceived to be the "right thing to do", rewrote and redefined some of the most important constitutional issues of our time. While such a disclosure, poorly written might leaden the eyelids of all but the most inspired, Newton masters this task by writing a clear and easily understood layman's explanation of the facts, the legal and social issues and the courts resolution. I found myself excited, engaged and highly entertained by Newton's easily understandable prose. I was in a sense a fly on the wall as some of the most important legal decisions of the 20th century unfolded before my eyes.

Warren is not portrayed as a flawless Deity (he after all recommended and supported the forced incarceration of Japanese American's in WW II) but rather as a multi-faceted personality whose core belief was in using the power of government to do good for the common man and whose political and legal judgment evolved to blend with and sometimes challenge the social and legal fabric of our nation.

I was amazed to learn of his post Miranda concern (fueled by a very real and I would say predictable jump in crime in America after Miranda) that perhaps the court had gone too far in defining the relationship between those who would do harm and those who are ultimately charged with our protection. Thus while the basic concept of Miranda is appropriate and now fully integrated into the fabric of our legal system, later Supreme courts thankfully have more clearly defined the boundaries under which we balance the rights of the accused and the right of our citizens to be free from the terror of criminal activity.

OK enough politics, after reading this book, I am wiser, far better informed and far more sympathetic to a man so many have reviled as the father of judicial activism. Such a label in the absence of context does a huge disservice to this huge man and his historical significance. This book provides a context and insight that far surpassed my expectations. Regardless of your politics or your view of judicial activism, this is a truly enlightening book worthy of your time.

This biography of Earl Warren is one of the few that uses the newley released sources on the Warren commission and other recent documents to add new insights into the life of the former governor and chief justice. The book beings with a look at Warren's life growing up in dusty Bakersfield California where his father worked on the railroad and life was very much a frontier town. After high school Warren went on to Berkley and became a member of the prestigious golden bear society which both his son and grandson would become members of.

Earl Warren served as a prosecutor and eventually a republican attorney general where he made a name for himself being tough on crime. The loss of his parents to murder and old age were severe setbacks in his life but helped shape his look on crime. Earl became a governor of the state at a critical time in its history and helped to usher in a new era of progressive government. Although he claimed to be a republican he was not a typical one of the time. He clung to his progressive roots and brought social reforms to California. Warren made several runs for the presidency and once was Dewey's running mate but the higher office would elude him for all of his life.

In order for Dwight Eisenhower to gain the nomination he was forced to make a concession to Warren that the first vacancy on the court would be his if he would throw his delegates behind Eisenhower. Warren agreed and the first vacancy to open up was that of Chief Justice. Warren proceeded to the court and brought his unique brand of progressive activism to the court to make some of the most pivotal decision to effect the country. The Miranda case, Baker v. carr, Brown, and many others would establish far reaching social changes that broke down the barriers of race and economic inequality leading to what Warren perceived as a more just society. The author does an excellent job of showing the interplay between the Supreme Court justices. The warren commission is also covered in very good detail although the author tries to hard to justify the role Warren played when it is obvious that the commission has come to the correct conclusion.

The book is very thorough and the only flaw I found was that it was incredibly proWarren to the point where he could do wrong. Earl Warren is a person to be respected and admired and his distinguished career does point to that but he is also human. The early cases where Warren used questionable tactics to gain confessions or his feud with Nixon do not make him a bad person they make him human. This is still an incredibly valuable book and does an excellent job of showing not only Warren's life but the social life of the times.