Earl Warren served as the fourteenth chief justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1953 to 1969. Warren, who was appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, had a long political career before coming chief justice. In 1948 he was the Republican Party's unsuccessful candidate for vice president. When first appointed many legal commentators did not expect from Warren, as he was an obvious political appointee who lacked judicial experience. However, within a year he had artfully negotiated a unanimous decision striking down racially segregated public schools. By the 1960s he had become the supreme judicial activist, leading the Court to make decisions that transformed many avenues of civil society. In the area of criminal law, Warren engineered a revolution that forced the states to change many parts of the their criminal procedure.

Warren was born on March 19, 1891 in Los Angeles, California. He earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the...