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Excerpts from pages 163-165
It is not at all clear that Miranda was a product
of the Court’s political ideology, that “ideology” being
extremely difficult to peg. Courts are cohorts of
individual concepts, but Courts also change with new
elections or appointments. The Warren Court was
characterized by most as “liberal” because its most
controversial opinions seemed more acceptable to
liberals than conservatives - yet the justices serving
under Chief Justice Warren’s administrative leadership
could never be pinned down as either liberal or
conservative. Each was an outspoken, independent thinker
who did not seem to cling to any defined political
ideology. Each made the effort to decide each case on
its specifics and merits.
Furthermore, the ancestries of Chief Justice Warren and
Justices Brennan, Black, Clark, Douglas, Fortas, Harlan,
Stewart, and White made their court emblematic of
America as a melting pot of political and social mores.
They were Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish and from
every region in America. Their early lives were spent in
the cities of the Northeast, the rural South, the
emerging Southwest, the homespun Midwest, and the West
Coast paradise. They were Republicans and Democrats who
owed their high-bench seats to the presidential politics
and merit selection tendencies of both parties. The
youngest was forty-nine, the oldest eighty. Justice
Black’s tenure on the Court had spanned five presidents
whereas Justice White was of a new generation and had
joined the bench during the presidency of John F.
Kennedy.
It is worth noting that Miranda was decided by a
five-to-four majority of the Court. That split demands a
look at the five who voted to reverse the convictions.
Did Chief Justice Warren and Justices Brennan, Black,
Douglas, and Fortas share a common set of concepts about
human life or culture? Alternatively, did they have
integrated assertions, theories, or aims that might
constitute a sociopolitical program?
Liva Baker, author of one of the most comprehensive
books written on the Miranda case, believes that
the essential commonality among the majority of five was
their socioeconomic status while growing up. “Once
again,” she writes of the Miranda vote, “the
Court had divided along class lines, the justices born
to families in humbler circumstances looking at the
interrogation room through the eyes of the defendant,
those born to families accustomed to privilege and
influence looking at it through the eyes of the
policeman.”
“Class lines,” alone, however, do not seem to provide a
full explanation. Families of modest means constitute
over 80 percent of the American population. Liva Baker’s
alternative thesis was that the five were connected by
way of their “humble origin.” Were they in fact all of
an origin that can be defined as humble?
Chief Justice Earl Warren was born in Los Angeles in
1891. Educated at the University of California, he was
admitted to the bar in 1914 and served one term as
attorney general of California and three terms as
governor of California before becoming the Republican
candidate for vice president in Thomas E. Dewey’s 1948
campaign. President Eisenhower appointed Warren as the
fourteenth chief justice in 1953, and he served on the
Court until his retirement in 1969. No one ever
described him as humble or as a man of modest means.
Justice Hugo Lafayette Black was born in Harlan,
Alabama, in 1886. He was educated at the University of
Alabama and served in the United States Senate.
President Roosevelt appointed him to the Supreme Court
in 1937. He certainly favored individual freedom and was
best known for his literal interpretation of the First
Amendment. He authored the Gideon opinion,
dissented in Griswold v. Connecticut, and served
on the Court until 1971. He can fairly be described as a
man of the people and perhaps even as self-effacing.
Justice William Brennan served on the Court for
thirty-four years under eight presidents. Born in
Newark, New Jersey, and educated at the University of
Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School, he rose to the rank
of colonel in the U.S. Army. President Eisenhower
appointed him to the Court in 1956. He was an
intellectual and a fierce advocate against capital
punishment.
Justice William O. Douglas hailed from Maine, Minnesota,
and was educated at Whitman College and Columbia
University. He taught law at Columbia and Yale before
being appointed to the Court by President Roosevelt. He
served on the Court for thirty-six years, longer than
any other justice did. He was said to be liberal on
social issues, balanced on economic issues, and
conservative on international issues. His clerks thought
him proud, not humble.
Justice Abe Fortas was born in Tennessee and educated at
Yale. First in his class, he was appointed to the
faculty at Yale upon his graduation. He served the
government in various capacities from 1937 to 1946 and
was a regular adviser to many national leaders,
including President Johnson, who appointed him to the
Supreme Court in 1965. Fortas may have had the shortest
tenure on the Court with his resignation in 1969. His
role in academics, government, and high-end law practice
hardly qualified him as a man of the people.
Two of the five majority justices were Republicans,
three were from large cities, and three attended
prestigious private law schools. All did well
financially and all were experienced in the ways of
politics and business at the time they formed the
majority in the Miranda decision. They were not
consistently on the same side of controversial issues
and often dissented in cases where one or the other
wrote the majority decision.
At least from this limited look at their lives, one can
not easily conclude that a common ideology drove their
decisions.
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