Newswise — The Warren Court remains one of the most influential courts of the 20th century, but its legacy is threatened, says a Swarthmore College Supreme Court scholar. "For civil rights and civil liberties decisions, it was the most influential," says Carol Nackenoff, a professor of political science. "But the new anti-federalist revolution is one of the biggest threats to that legacy because of how it has transformed the Warren Court's vision of the relationships between state and federal government."
According to Nackenoff, the Rehnquist Court is calling into question the reach of the federal government in civil rights law. "Some major civil rights measures, including provisions in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, hinge on a reading of the commerce clause, not the 14th Amendment," she says. "If the Court's understanding of what constitutes interstate commerce becomes more restrictive, then those civil rights laws could be in jeopardy."
October 5th marks the 50th anniversary of Earl Warren's induction as Chief Justice of the United States. His leadership over the next 16 years was instrumental in several important and widely influential decisions. Among them:
o Brown v. Board of Education, which dismantled the official apparatus of segregation by overturning, despite militant opposition, the doctrine of "separate but equal" established in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson,
o Gideon v. Wainright and Miranda v. Arizona, which assured the rights of the accused to legal counsel and protection from self-incrimination,
o Brandenburg v. Ohio, which expanded First Amendment speech protections,
o New York Times v. Sullivan, which expanded freedom of the press, and
o Griswold v. Connecticut, which determined that the sphere of privacy encompassed couples' right to information about and use of birth control.
While Warren wrote the Brown decision himself, Nackenoff says he considered Baker v. Carr to be one of the most important decisions during his years on the bench. That decision, written by William Brennan, formed the basis of the principle "one man, one vote" by deciding that redistricting can be subject to federal judicial review. Prior to that decision, redistricting was a political question. "This was not specifically a race-based case, but many of the redistricting issues involved race," she says. "Warren got the court involved in what constitutes equality."
Warren, according to Nackenoff, knew it was essential for the Court to speak in one voice. "He was masterful in getting his colleagues on board on controversial issues like Brown, where he got an 8-0 decision," she says. "The court no longer tends to speak in one voice and is more fractured and divided, which often makes the decisions less powerful."
An authority on American politics and constitutional law, Nackenoff is the author of The Fictional Republic (1994) and is currently completing an article on the Supreme Court and American political development. She joined Swarthmore's faculty in 1992.
Located near Philadelphia, Swarthmore is a highly selective liberal arts college with an enrollment of 1,450. Swarthmore is consistently ranked among the top liberal arts colleges in the country.
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