Chief Justice: A Biography of Earl Warren

Midway through his presidency, Dwight Eisenhower fumed that his appointment of Earl Warren ""was the biggest damn fool thing I ever did."" He was exasperated, he complained to Warren himself, about ""those Communist cases."" When Warren asked whether he had read any Supreme Court decisions, however, Eisenhower acknowledged he had not though he knew what was in them. From school integration to one man-one vote and the application of the Bill of Rights to recalcitrant states, the court's fundamental shifts toward liberalism were not all of Warren's making but were managed under his activist leadership. As unstylish as its subject, Cray's prose fits in all the useful facts about the pragmatic district attorney in Oakland who would become, as governor, the ""California Roosevelt."" Responsible in part for the panicky post-Pearl Harbor herding of Japanese residents to inland camps, he had not always put civil rights atop his agenda, but experience more than ideology drove his judicial philosophy. His placement at the head of the highest court made him the most influential jurist since John Marshall. Cray's admiring if bland portrait, despite a propensity for repetition, covers all the essentials. Photos not seen by PW. BOMC main selection. (June)