The Warren Court and the Pursuit of Justice: A Critical Issue [Hardcover]

Morton J. Horwitz (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0809096641 | ISBN-13: 978-0809096640 | Publication Date: June 1998 | Edition: 1

When Earl Warren was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1953, few Americans imagined that the noted Republican would become the remarkable leader of a Court now recognized as the greatest liberal Court of this century. Here distinguished legal historian Morton Horwitz considers the landmark cases that transformed American law in those postwar years.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Morton Horwitz's The Warren Court and the Pursuit of Justice is a book for the layperson outlining the changes the Warren Court created in America's civil liberties jurisprudence. While the book is in no sense a polemic, Horwitz assumes the reader shares his view that what the Warren Court wrought was progress, and he criticizes the justices only when they failed to reach liberal results. Justice Byron White would have winced at the way Horwitz characterizes decisions and justices as being simply "liberal" or "conservative," and one could argue that such a politicization is a problem rather than a virtue. But ACLU members and casual students of American legal history will find the book a quick read that touches upon all of the substantial decisions in a critical period of the Supreme Court's life. --Ted Frank

From Kirkus Reviews

Less an introduction to the Warren Court than a paean to it. Harvard law professor Horwitz developed the material for this very short book through teaching an undergraduate course on the subject. The result has little to offer readers who are familiar with the constitutional struggles of the past few decades, but may be of some use for those needing a primer, especially high-school and college students with little knowledge of the law. Horwitz finds a common biographical thread among the liberals who dominated the Supreme Court in the 1950s and '60s: Warren, Black, Douglas, Brennan, Goldberg, Fortas, and Marshall all came from ``socially marginal'' backgrounds, by reason of poverty, religion, or race. Without being reductionist, he contends that this psychological factor made the Warren Court majority more eager than previous courts to extend constitutional protection to racial, religious, and political minorities, criminal defendants, and the poor. It was the Warren Court that ruled school desegregation unconstitutional, applied the Bill of Rights to state criminal cases, compelled the states to apportion their legislatures on a ``one-person, one-vote'' basis, made dissent less dangerous by adopting Holmes's ``clear and present danger'' test for political speech, discovered a constitutional right of privacy, made it virtually impossible to prosecute obscenity cases, greatly restricted libel actions, and found that welfare benefits were an entitlement rather than merely a privilege. However controversial these examples of judicial activism were (and still are), Horwitz's approval of them is almost uncritical. Although he provides sympathetic analyses of Justice Frankfurter's advocacy of judicial restraint and Justice Black's departure from his liberal brethren over the issue of civil disobedience, Horwitz has produced a very narrow account of the Warren era. (He also, unfortunately, repeats the canard that Eisenhower traded the promise of a Supreme Court appointment for Warren's support at the 1952 Republican Convention.) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 132 pages
• Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub; 1 edition (June 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809096641
• ISBN-13: 978-0809096640
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,049,136 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Accessible and Concise Look at the Warren Court, September 24, 1999

By 

suzy murray - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Warren Court and the Pursuit of Justice: A Critical Issue (Hardcover)

Professor Horowitz provides a very accessible accounting of the Warren Court's impact on America and American jurisprudence. For those with legal training, this short history puts all the doctrines learned in law school-the void for vagueness application to the First Amendment, the Carolene Products Footnote Four analysis-into a tidy, compact context. For the non-lawyer, Horowitz avoids the legalese and shows how the Warren Court rulings affected the course of American events. Horowitz examines the court's impact in several areas: civil rights, democractic principles of governance, free speech, and the incorporation doctrine as applied to criminal procedure. Horowitz truly has admiration for his subject, but that admiration is not unqualified, and he takes the court to task for buckling under McCarthyism and for not standing up for its First Amendment principles, although Horowitz clearly blames one justice, Justice Frankfurter, for the court's reluctance to take on McCarthy. An excellent summary of the Warren Court, its decisions, and the justices who together made up its collective personality.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Book, May 21, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Warren Court and the Pursuit of Justice (Paperback)

I just took a class with Professor Horwitz of the same title here at Harvard, and this book clearly summarizes the major themes of the Warren Court. It is wonderfully written, moves very fast, but there are details given about this wonderful era of change.

The book centers on the Warren Court's view of substantive democracy as a central organizing principle for the many decisions. It espouses the ideal that while responding to times, the Court also had higher ideals and used these two together.

The book works through major case areas and is divided as such, looking first at the race relations and civil rights cases, then moving on to the response to McCarthyism with Free Speech, and views of Rights and Democracy. Each section builds on each other until Horwitz's great theme is revealed.

It really gives the reader a great understanding of the Court, and one can come out of it feeling great. It works well with the course and would work very well on its own too.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Honoring Our Best Traditions, February 19, 2006

By 

Reader (Arlington, Virginia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Warren Court and the Pursuit of Justice (Paperback)

Throughout most of its history, the Supreme Court has been been dominated by the forces of private property and white privilege. The Court has tortured the plain language of the Constitution to accommodate Southern apartheid, to disenfranchise minorities, and to tolerate the repression of labor unions and socialists. Progressives who look to the Court to enlarge American democracy ignore the history of the institution. Instead, they seek inspiration from the anomalous Warren Court of the 1950s and '60s. This book explains why.

"The Warren Court and the Pursuit of Justice" is a gem of popular legal history. It tells the story of how the Warren Court breathed life into the Constitution by ending school segregation, expanding freedom of speech, constitutionalizing state criminal justice systems, and requiring states to draw electoral districts on the principle of one man/one vote. Horwitz writes clearly and economically, and packs a great deal of legal, historical, and biographical material into a small space. His focus is not on technical legal doctrine. Instead, he aims to situate the Warren Court within the political and social history of the era, in the process offering the reader mini-essays on topics such as the civil rights movement and McCarthyism. His hero is William Brennan. His book is a total success.

For honoring our best democratic traditions, the Warren Court was vilified by racists, McCarthyites, and Richard Nixon. As Horwitz observes, "Impeach Earl Warren" signs blossomed in the states of the Old Confederacy. This was telling. Conservatives may hate to admit it, but modern conservative court-bashing predates Roe v. Wade by many years. Its social and political roots can be traced to the massive extralegal resistance to desegregation in the South. To the extent a Court can be judged by its enemies, the Warren Court was on the side of the angels.

That was long ago. The politics of the Supreme Court have undergone a seachange since the time of Earl Warren. No one should be surprised if the new Roberts Court pushes a conservative agenda that strengthens Presidents and prosecutors, while disempowering consumers, workers, and minorities. All the while, progressives will wring their hands and act as if the Court is betraying its traditions. In reality, it will be reverting to norm. Much will depend on who wins the White House and the Senate in 2008, for, as Horwtiz demonstrates, the bottomline is politics.