Earl Warren

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33590, 19 July 1974, Page 10

Earl Warren

The father of Linda Brown, an eight-year-old black girl, decided to seek the right for his daughter to attend school with the children of white parents in Topeka. Kansas. In May of 1954 the United States Supreme Court ruled that she did have the right to attend school with white children. As it turned out, Linda Brown did not attend school with whites, but the ruling shook the United States profoundly. The myth of “ separate but equal ” education was broken; the ramifications are still being felt today.

The man who led the Supreme Court was Chief Justice Earl Warren, who died last week. He retired from the Supreme Court in 1969. The judgment on Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka was only one of many on civil rights which the Supreme Court made during Mr Warren’s term as Chief Justice. Although not his own favourite ruling, it was probably as influential as any. Whole patterns of life were changed by it. Later, the Supreme Court directed reluctant school districts to desegregate “ with all deliberate speed ”. The Warren Court also made important rulings on the rights of defendants to legal representation, and to decline to answer police questions; it defined relations between the Church and the State; and it reinforced the equality in voting so that an end was put to disproportionate rural influence in the election of State legislatures. The principles are widely accepted in the 1970 s within the United States and beyond. Mr Warren’s greatness lay in deciding what was right long before public opinion accepted it as right. When the civil rights demonstrations and riots occurred, the Supreme Court had already ruled that some of what was being demanded was just. It was a moderating influence on the demands. The law had not been used to justify the status quo. but to change what was unjust

The widespread and far-reaching influence of the Supreme Court of the United States — the sort of influence which in a Parliamentary system of government would be expected to come from the legislature — is founded mostly on the place of the Constitution in the Republic. The Supreme Court has the power to examine state laws and practices and to rule on whether they conform with the Constitution. Such cases as come before the Supreme Court therefore often involve fundamental principles of human freedom. Because the tSupreme Court makes its rulings on these questions public and gives its reasons, the ruling sometimes have an influence wider than the United States. Something of the influence of Mr Warren’s Court will probably be felt whenever and wherever civil rights are considered.