Earl Warren
From The Kennedy Assassination Resource
California district attorney of Alameda County, the 30th Governor of California, and the 14th Chief Justice of the United States (from 1953 to 1969).
Earl Warren was born in Bakersfield, California, to Matt Warren, a Norwegian immigrant, and Christine "Chrystal" Hernlund, a Swedish immigrant. Earl grew up in Bakersfield, California, and attended the University of California, Berkeley, both as an undergraduate in Legal Studies and as a law student at Boalt Hall earning his JD in 1914. While at Berkeley, Warren joined the Sigma Phi Society, a fraternal organization with which he maintained lifelong ties. Warren was admitted to the California bar in 1914.
Warren then worked for five years for private law firms in the San Francisco Bay Area. He began working for San Francisco County in 1920 and in 1925 was appointed as District Attorney of Alameda County when the incumbent resigned. As a tough-on-crime District Attorney and reformer, Warren had a reputation for high-handedness; however, none of his convictions were ever overturned on appeal.
Warren became a well-known figure in California and was appointed to the Regents of the University of California while district attorney. In 1939, he became Attorney General of the State of California. He was elected Governor of California, in 1942, as a Republican. California law at the time allowed individuals to run in any primary election they chose. In 1946, Warren managed the singular feat of winning the Republican, Democratic, and Progressive primary elections and thus ran unopposed in the 1946 general election. He was elected to a third term (as a Republican) in 1950.
Warren ran for Vice President of the United States in 1948 on a ticket with Thomas Dewey. They lost narrowly to Harry Truman and Alben Barkley.
In 1953, Warren was appointed Chief Justice of the United States by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. To the surprise of many, Warren was a much more liberal justice than had been anticipated. As a result, President Eisenhower later remarked that nominating Warren for the Chief Justice seat was "the biggest damned-fool mistake I ever made." Warren was able to craft a long series of landmark decisions including Brown v. Board of Education 347 U.S. 483 (1954), which overthrew the segregation of public schools; the "one man, one vote" cases of 1962–1964, which dramatically altered the relative power of rural regions in many states; Hernandez v. Texas, which gave Mexican-Americans the right to serve on juries; and Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), which required that certain rights of a person being interrogated while in police custody be clearly explained, including the right to an attorney (often called the "Miranda warning").
At the direct request of President Lyndon Johnson Warren headed the Warren Commission to investigate the circumstances of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The Commission eventually concluded that the assassination was the act of a single individual, Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone.
Warren was married to a young widow born in Sweden named Nina Palmquist Meyers. He died in Washington, DC. The Earl Warren Bill of Rights Project is named in his honor. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1981.
