- Email: [email protected]
The memoirs of Chief Justice Earl Warren
BOOK REVIEWS
367
Victimology: The Victim and His Criminal by Stephen Schafer. Reston Publishing Co., Inc. (11480 Sunset Hills Road, Reston, Virginia 22090), 1977, 175 pp., hardcover--$9.95; softcover--$6.95. Schafer presents a topic that is just being developed in the area of criminal justice-victimology. This presentation includes four views of the subject: the history of the victim, criminal-victim relationship as a crime factor, compensation and restitution to victims of crime, and the functional responsibility. The strongest area of the book, as seen by this reviewer, is the examination of the history of the victim. Little has been written in this area and the thirty pages covering it are well done. The historical presentation traces the plight of the victim from a struggle for power supremacy of early man to the current concern for victims. This section was carefully designed to not be too laborious or too skimpy. Schafer highlights the Hebrew laws relating to the victim and the plight of the victim of the Middle Ages. He summarizes the place of the victim in relationship to the rise and fall of the family and society. In the second section of the book, the relationship of the criminal to the victim is examined as a factor in the criminal occurrence. Mendelsohn's new terminology is examined as are Sellin and Wolfgang's victim typologies. Other relationships that are examined include interpersonal relationships, ages, educational levels, occupations, and geographic relationships between the parties. The next area of coverage is victim compensation and restitution. Schafer discusses several types of compensation including: civil damages, criminally enforced compensation, penal restitution, compensation by state with state restitution by offender, and compensation from a neutral party. Restitution is seen by the author as being the first step to rehabilitation. The last pages of the book look at the problem of responsibility: offender responsibility, social responsibility, legal responsibility and victim responsibility. In conclusion, this reviewer sees this book as a worthwhile contribution to the area of victimology study. The only shortcoming of the book is its brevity, only 175 pages. The topic needs further examination, but to supplement information on victimology for a larger general course on criminal justice, this book does an excellent job. Gail L. Truitt Social and Criminal Justice Lincoln Land Community College Springfield, Illinois 62708
The Memoirs of Chief Justice Earl Warren by Chief Justice Warren. Doubleday and Company, Inc. (501 Franklin Avenue, Garden City, New York 11530), 1977, 394 pp., hardcover--$12.95. This is a personal narrative of one of the outstanding contributors to the amelioration of the lot of the common--and often forgotten--people in twentieth century American society. In his own language, Warren presents a detailed--and at times a meticulous--account of his parents, his other close relatives, his boyhood, his formal educational experiences, and his career in public life. In
368
BOOK REVIEWS
short, this autobiography presents for the first time an explanation of how he saw himself, the people and events which influenced his life and upon which he, too, left a significant impact. Warren was a friendly and rather outgoing person, but he was resolute, independent, and intellectually honest-----even in his political behavior. Since he was not a man to duck the difficult issues, his decisions were often unpopular; e.g., his role in the relocation of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the Warren Report, and some of the crucial Supreme Court decisions in which he participated or wrote during his sixteen years as chief justice. In this book, he expresses some of his long-suppressed reactions to the attacks of his critics, who included President Eisenhower, the John Birch Society, and the American Bar Association. The volume indicates--at least to this reviewer--that the shattering blows that many of his United States Supreme Court decisions dealt to various facets of American institutionalism were overt manifestations of his lifelong concern and unabashed determination to support what he perceived to be the responsibility of public government to protect the rights of all of its people. A cursory reading of the instant work should quickly dispel the often erroneous view held by many that Warren' s ~'activistic philosophy" on the Court represented a significant departure from the beliefs and policies that he had espoused and implemented during his earlier public officeholding days. Even when he was a racket-busting district attorney in Oakland (California), his determination to vigorously prosecute law violators never overshadowed his concern to accord due respect for fundamental fairness. His reorganization of the California attorney general's office and his programs and behavior during his three terms as governor of the state of California were certainly a harbinger of the eventual Mr. Chief Justice Warren of the United States Supreme Court. Although their public careers were more than one hundred and fifty years apart, Earl Warren and Edmund Burke occasioned a similar reaction from some of their contemporaries: Each was perceived to have deviated from his earlier philosophy. Burke's Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791) represented a marked departure from the liberalism that many of his followers had read into his Speech on Conciliation with America (1775). Warren's pronouncements during his tenure on the United States Supreme Court were viewed by many, including President Eisenhower who appointed him, as having been a far cry from the policies of Earl Warren the district attorney, the attorney general, and the governor of California. A careful reading and examination of the careers of Burke and Warren will probably show that neither man had altered his philosophy. Instead, it was the times that had changed or perhaps the conceptual framework within which each (Burke and Warren) had operated that had changed. This, of course, had an effect on the expectations and/or the perceptions of the evaluators. The memoirs reveal some very interesting, and perhaps little known beliefs and behavioral traits of Mr. Warren. q-~he following are illustrative. Visitors who wished to discuss matters of public policy with him while he was governor of the state of California had to enter his office through the front door and have the interview listed on the bulletin board so that it would be definitely understood that he would not be a party to any under-the-table negotiations. " I t is amazing how many people who want to talk to the govemor are deterred from doing so by such a simple and straightforward device." In explaining why he did not discuss state business in his home or in his hotel room when he was traveling, Mr. Warren declared that " I took the position that the state provided me an office in which to perform my duties, and it was the only place where that should be done." He never had an unlisted telephone number until he assumed the office of chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, except for a Civil Defense number. Warren never built a political organization, and he did not accept any campaign contributions from persons who attempted to elicit a promise that officeholder Warren would grant some special favor in return. Warren was virtually bipartisan in all of his state and local electoral campaigns. This was quite easy because cross-filing was common in California. He depended mainly on volunteers and strong support from persons who were more interested in
BOOK REVIEWS
369
issues than in party labels. Despite these rather unusual proclivities, Warren was a clever politicianstatesman. He was "enamored of President Lincoln's statement 'I am a slow walker, but I never walk backwards.' " He considered each day a wasted one if he couldn't point to some progress made. He did not wish "to be categorized as either a liberal or a conservative because too many people calling themselves conservatives would consent to no change, and too many so-called liberals would also permit no change unless it was on their often unrealistic terms." Explaining his basic approach to campaigning while he was governor, Mr. Warren related, " M y most important campaigning was between election years. I would personally go to parts of the state where there were problems and discuss them with those who were concerned, not just politicians but knowledgeable people without regard to their political affiliations. Then I would invite delegations to come to Sacramento to discuss the difficulties with me whether they were friendly on the surface or not." During his terms as governer of California, Warren provided aggressive and constructive leadership. He was indeed a pragmatist who advocated and put into operation programs that dealt with what he regarded as "bread and butter" matters. These included a sound fiscal policy, the conservation of natural resources (particularly the development of "our water supply"), the expansion of the state highway system to better coordinate rural and urban life, the expansion and improvement of public educational facilities, effective law enforcement (including the establishment of a state department of justice), an improved state mental hospital system, the up-grading of state correctional policies and institutions, attacking the problem of environmental pollution, and making health care services more readily available to poor people. To carry out those programs, he recruited top-level administrators from within and outside of the state of California. They were admonished to refrain from making partisan political responses to problems that they encountered. He felt that one of his greatest satisfactions in public office was that not one of his appointees "was ever accused of dishonesty or of violating his oath of office as a public servant . . . . Nor was there ever a leak in the confidences that were exchanged in the inner sanctum of my office." Warren's political activities were not limited to California. He was Dewey's running mate in the 1948 presidential election. He accepted the second slot only after much persuasion by Dewey and a number of other Republican leaders. Warren did not look favorably on the idea of leaving the office of governor of California to become merely a presiding officer of the United States Senate. Dewey assured him that in the event they were elected, he would make the office of vice-president a meaningful one in his administration. During the unsuccessful campaign, he became provoked with the role assigned him--and also with the set speech approach of Dewey, which did not consider issues of interest to the various peoples whom he addressed. He complained to Dewey: "That is a hell of a way to run a railroad." He led a delegation pledged to his candidacy for the presidency to the 1952 Republican Convention at which General Eisenhower won the presidential nomination, and eventually the election. In December, President-elect Eisenhower called Warren and informed him that although he could not find a place in the cabinet for him, he would offer him the first vacancy on the Supreme Court. Warren didn't take the promise seriously because, as he put it, he had "often heard of newly elected officials who promised positions in the indefinite future, only to forget when the jobs actually became open for appointment." Commenting upon his eventual appointment, Mr. Warren said: " I was not wrong in this instance, because when Chief Justice Vinson suddenly died, the President shopped around for a successor. He suggested the position to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who chose to remain in the cabinet, and seriously considered others, who were eliminated for one reason or another. Only then did he decide on me. The general's recollection and mine do not fully agree, but my part in the selection of a replacement for Vinson was so simple that there could be little room for faulty memory."
370
BOOK REVIEWS
Chief Justice Warren reports that the day of his induction was for him " a t once the most awesome and the loneliest d a y " of his public career. " I approached the high office with a reverential regard and with a profound recognition of my unpreparedness to assume its obligations in such an abrupt m a n n e r . " It differed so greatly from the other offices he had held. Although he had served as a district attorney and as the attorney general in California, and had once argued a case in the United States Supreme Court, he lamented his long absence from the courtroom. There was also the fact that he " w a s not acquainted with Washington or even with members of the Supreme C o u r t . " All of this " w e i g h e d heavily on my mind as I thought about the fact that in a few hours I would be presiding over the highest court in the l a n d . " The memoirs set forth in considerable detail the various procedures of the Court, the role of the chief justice, the ways in which decisions are reached, how the opinion writers are designated, the interactions of the justices, and the necessity for making certain that decisions are not " l e a k e d " before opinions are reported to the public. There are comments on some of the landmark opinions that were reached during his tenure on the Court, including the one on school desegregation, and some of the public reactions to several of those decisions (Brown v. Board of Education, Baker v. Carr, Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, etc.). Perhaps the opinions that elicited the most scathing denunciations were those that outlawed separation or exclusion on the basis of race in the use of public facilities. Although Mr. Chief Justice Warren avers, " I made it a practice not to read the ' fan' mail concerning our cases, whether it arrived before or after decisions had been announced," he did read some of the letters that the Court had received following the Brown v. Board of Education Decision in 1954. " T o my surprise, there were only between six and seven hundred" of t h e m - about equally divided pro and con. President Eisenhower and many other leading Americans did not attempt to hide their displeasure with that decision. Eisenhower is reported to have lamented that appointing Earl Warren to the United States Supreme Court was one of the greatest mistakes he had ever m a d e . " Warren thought that Baker v. Cart [369 U.S. 186 ( 1962)], the Tennessee reapportionment case, was the most important case decided during his tenure on the Court. "'The reason I am of the opinion that Baker v. Carr is so important is because I believe so devoutly that, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln's famous epigram, ours is a government of all the people, by all the people, and forall the p e o p l e . " In Reynolds v. Sims, [377 U.S. 533 ( 1964)], another reapportionment case, speaking for a divided court ( 8 - 1 ) that held an Alabama legislative reapportionment plan to be violative of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the chief justice declared that "Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests. As long as ours is a representative form of government, and our legislatures are those instruments of government elected directly by and directly representative of the people, the right to elect legislators in a free and unimpaired fashion is a bedrock of our political s y s t e m . " He assigned most of the state reapportionment cases to himself because his experiences in California had convinced him that fair representation meant equal representation in which one man's vote had the same value as any other and that legislatures had to be elected on that basis according to the United States Constitution. He knew the Reynolds decision would create considerable controversy. The Council on State Governments conducted an organized campaign to neutralize that decision. It and others proposed a change in the process to amend the United States Constitution, and also, the establishment of a Court of the Union that could review and overthrow decisions of the United States Supreme Court, involving f e d e r a l - s t a t e relations. Warren avers that " T h e Court was under attack by powerful interests nearly all the time 1 was t h e r e . " In addition to its civil rights and reapportionment decisions, the Court came under attack for many of its ground-breaking holdings in the areas of criminal procedure, religious liberty, free speech, free press, industrial relations, and the regulation of business combinations. The John Birch
BOOK REVIEWS
371
Society; Senators Jenner of Indiana, Butler of Maryland, Joe McCarthy (the red-baiter); state's righters; organizations unhappy with the compulsory prayer ruling [Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962)]; believers in "Constitutional Government"; and electric power interests were among the front runners to discredit the Warren Court. Although the chief justice does not complain about the criticisms that were made---even those that suggested his impeachment--he felt let down because of the lethargic or indifferent stance taken by the American Bar Association. "The Court ~'eceived no support of any kind from the American Bar Association as we were pilloried and reviled . . . . Justices must take it [criticism] in silence, leaving it to the people to form their own opinions concerning the Court's actions. This limitation and others make the life of a Justice of the Supreme Court an austere one, yet I could generally accept denunciation as a part of the job without resentment, except for one phase of it. That phase was the treatment received from the American Bar Association . . . . " He later resigned from the membership of that association, the reasons for which are set forth in the memoirs. Chief Justice Warren explains the reluctance with which he consented to head the President's Commission which investigated the Kennedy assassination (The Warren Commission), and the procedures and conclusions of that body. He strongly defends the commission's conduct and conclusions. In the Epilogue, the editors inform us that Mr. Warren "had intended to provide further material and put a finer finish on what is here." He would have expanded on his Court years and would have discussed in greater detail his duties as chief justice with special reference to the administration of the court system, and his leadership in judicial conferences. He had also planned to share some of his experiences on the boards of the National Gallery and Smithsonian Institution, to write briefly on his travels and on his work with the World Peace Through Law Organization, from which he received its World Jurist Award in 1971 and its Human Rights Award in 1973. It is highly possible that he might have provided us with some helpful observations on such facets of the contemporary American scene as the future of the Court after his departure, the Watergate matter, and the need for international justice. Although the retired chief justice died before he could include the above, the memoirs are a valuable addition to what has previously been written about Earl Warren and the environment of which he was a part. The many behind-the-scenes revelations regarding the conduct and attitudes of contemporary American political leaders leave the reader with a more complete understanding of some of the underlying factors which influenced so many crucial public policies and/or decisions during the last forty or fifty years in the United States. The Prologue and the Epilogue are useful contributions to this easy to read and informative volume.
J. Erroll Miller Professor and Chairman Department of Forensic Studies Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47401
367
Victimology: The Victim and His Criminal by Stephen Schafer. Reston Publishing Co., Inc. (11480 Sunset Hills Road, Reston, Virginia 22090), 1977, 175 pp., hardcover--$9.95; softcover--$6.95. Schafer presents a topic that is just being developed in the area of criminal justice-victimology. This presentation includes four views of the subject: the history of the victim, criminal-victim relationship as a crime factor, compensation and restitution to victims of crime, and the functional responsibility. The strongest area of the book, as seen by this reviewer, is the examination of the history of the victim. Little has been written in this area and the thirty pages covering it are well done. The historical presentation traces the plight of the victim from a struggle for power supremacy of early man to the current concern for victims. This section was carefully designed to not be too laborious or too skimpy. Schafer highlights the Hebrew laws relating to the victim and the plight of the victim of the Middle Ages. He summarizes the place of the victim in relationship to the rise and fall of the family and society. In the second section of the book, the relationship of the criminal to the victim is examined as a factor in the criminal occurrence. Mendelsohn's new terminology is examined as are Sellin and Wolfgang's victim typologies. Other relationships that are examined include interpersonal relationships, ages, educational levels, occupations, and geographic relationships between the parties. The next area of coverage is victim compensation and restitution. Schafer discusses several types of compensation including: civil damages, criminally enforced compensation, penal restitution, compensation by state with state restitution by offender, and compensation from a neutral party. Restitution is seen by the author as being the first step to rehabilitation. The last pages of the book look at the problem of responsibility: offender responsibility, social responsibility, legal responsibility and victim responsibility. In conclusion, this reviewer sees this book as a worthwhile contribution to the area of victimology study. The only shortcoming of the book is its brevity, only 175 pages. The topic needs further examination, but to supplement information on victimology for a larger general course on criminal justice, this book does an excellent job. Gail L. Truitt Social and Criminal Justice Lincoln Land Community College Springfield, Illinois 62708
The Memoirs of Chief Justice Earl Warren by Chief Justice Warren. Doubleday and Company, Inc. (501 Franklin Avenue, Garden City, New York 11530), 1977, 394 pp., hardcover--$12.95. This is a personal narrative of one of the outstanding contributors to the amelioration of the lot of the common--and often forgotten--people in twentieth century American society. In his own language, Warren presents a detailed--and at times a meticulous--account of his parents, his other close relatives, his boyhood, his formal educational experiences, and his career in public life. In
368
BOOK REVIEWS
short, this autobiography presents for the first time an explanation of how he saw himself, the people and events which influenced his life and upon which he, too, left a significant impact. Warren was a friendly and rather outgoing person, but he was resolute, independent, and intellectually honest-----even in his political behavior. Since he was not a man to duck the difficult issues, his decisions were often unpopular; e.g., his role in the relocation of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the Warren Report, and some of the crucial Supreme Court decisions in which he participated or wrote during his sixteen years as chief justice. In this book, he expresses some of his long-suppressed reactions to the attacks of his critics, who included President Eisenhower, the John Birch Society, and the American Bar Association. The volume indicates--at least to this reviewer--that the shattering blows that many of his United States Supreme Court decisions dealt to various facets of American institutionalism were overt manifestations of his lifelong concern and unabashed determination to support what he perceived to be the responsibility of public government to protect the rights of all of its people. A cursory reading of the instant work should quickly dispel the often erroneous view held by many that Warren' s ~'activistic philosophy" on the Court represented a significant departure from the beliefs and policies that he had espoused and implemented during his earlier public officeholding days. Even when he was a racket-busting district attorney in Oakland (California), his determination to vigorously prosecute law violators never overshadowed his concern to accord due respect for fundamental fairness. His reorganization of the California attorney general's office and his programs and behavior during his three terms as governor of the state of California were certainly a harbinger of the eventual Mr. Chief Justice Warren of the United States Supreme Court. Although their public careers were more than one hundred and fifty years apart, Earl Warren and Edmund Burke occasioned a similar reaction from some of their contemporaries: Each was perceived to have deviated from his earlier philosophy. Burke's Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791) represented a marked departure from the liberalism that many of his followers had read into his Speech on Conciliation with America (1775). Warren's pronouncements during his tenure on the United States Supreme Court were viewed by many, including President Eisenhower who appointed him, as having been a far cry from the policies of Earl Warren the district attorney, the attorney general, and the governor of California. A careful reading and examination of the careers of Burke and Warren will probably show that neither man had altered his philosophy. Instead, it was the times that had changed or perhaps the conceptual framework within which each (Burke and Warren) had operated that had changed. This, of course, had an effect on the expectations and/or the perceptions of the evaluators. The memoirs reveal some very interesting, and perhaps little known beliefs and behavioral traits of Mr. Warren. q-~he following are illustrative. Visitors who wished to discuss matters of public policy with him while he was governor of the state of California had to enter his office through the front door and have the interview listed on the bulletin board so that it would be definitely understood that he would not be a party to any under-the-table negotiations. " I t is amazing how many people who want to talk to the govemor are deterred from doing so by such a simple and straightforward device." In explaining why he did not discuss state business in his home or in his hotel room when he was traveling, Mr. Warren declared that " I took the position that the state provided me an office in which to perform my duties, and it was the only place where that should be done." He never had an unlisted telephone number until he assumed the office of chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, except for a Civil Defense number. Warren never built a political organization, and he did not accept any campaign contributions from persons who attempted to elicit a promise that officeholder Warren would grant some special favor in return. Warren was virtually bipartisan in all of his state and local electoral campaigns. This was quite easy because cross-filing was common in California. He depended mainly on volunteers and strong support from persons who were more interested in
BOOK REVIEWS
369
issues than in party labels. Despite these rather unusual proclivities, Warren was a clever politicianstatesman. He was "enamored of President Lincoln's statement 'I am a slow walker, but I never walk backwards.' " He considered each day a wasted one if he couldn't point to some progress made. He did not wish "to be categorized as either a liberal or a conservative because too many people calling themselves conservatives would consent to no change, and too many so-called liberals would also permit no change unless it was on their often unrealistic terms." Explaining his basic approach to campaigning while he was governor, Mr. Warren related, " M y most important campaigning was between election years. I would personally go to parts of the state where there were problems and discuss them with those who were concerned, not just politicians but knowledgeable people without regard to their political affiliations. Then I would invite delegations to come to Sacramento to discuss the difficulties with me whether they were friendly on the surface or not." During his terms as governer of California, Warren provided aggressive and constructive leadership. He was indeed a pragmatist who advocated and put into operation programs that dealt with what he regarded as "bread and butter" matters. These included a sound fiscal policy, the conservation of natural resources (particularly the development of "our water supply"), the expansion of the state highway system to better coordinate rural and urban life, the expansion and improvement of public educational facilities, effective law enforcement (including the establishment of a state department of justice), an improved state mental hospital system, the up-grading of state correctional policies and institutions, attacking the problem of environmental pollution, and making health care services more readily available to poor people. To carry out those programs, he recruited top-level administrators from within and outside of the state of California. They were admonished to refrain from making partisan political responses to problems that they encountered. He felt that one of his greatest satisfactions in public office was that not one of his appointees "was ever accused of dishonesty or of violating his oath of office as a public servant . . . . Nor was there ever a leak in the confidences that were exchanged in the inner sanctum of my office." Warren's political activities were not limited to California. He was Dewey's running mate in the 1948 presidential election. He accepted the second slot only after much persuasion by Dewey and a number of other Republican leaders. Warren did not look favorably on the idea of leaving the office of governor of California to become merely a presiding officer of the United States Senate. Dewey assured him that in the event they were elected, he would make the office of vice-president a meaningful one in his administration. During the unsuccessful campaign, he became provoked with the role assigned him--and also with the set speech approach of Dewey, which did not consider issues of interest to the various peoples whom he addressed. He complained to Dewey: "That is a hell of a way to run a railroad." He led a delegation pledged to his candidacy for the presidency to the 1952 Republican Convention at which General Eisenhower won the presidential nomination, and eventually the election. In December, President-elect Eisenhower called Warren and informed him that although he could not find a place in the cabinet for him, he would offer him the first vacancy on the Supreme Court. Warren didn't take the promise seriously because, as he put it, he had "often heard of newly elected officials who promised positions in the indefinite future, only to forget when the jobs actually became open for appointment." Commenting upon his eventual appointment, Mr. Warren said: " I was not wrong in this instance, because when Chief Justice Vinson suddenly died, the President shopped around for a successor. He suggested the position to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who chose to remain in the cabinet, and seriously considered others, who were eliminated for one reason or another. Only then did he decide on me. The general's recollection and mine do not fully agree, but my part in the selection of a replacement for Vinson was so simple that there could be little room for faulty memory."
370
BOOK REVIEWS
Chief Justice Warren reports that the day of his induction was for him " a t once the most awesome and the loneliest d a y " of his public career. " I approached the high office with a reverential regard and with a profound recognition of my unpreparedness to assume its obligations in such an abrupt m a n n e r . " It differed so greatly from the other offices he had held. Although he had served as a district attorney and as the attorney general in California, and had once argued a case in the United States Supreme Court, he lamented his long absence from the courtroom. There was also the fact that he " w a s not acquainted with Washington or even with members of the Supreme C o u r t . " All of this " w e i g h e d heavily on my mind as I thought about the fact that in a few hours I would be presiding over the highest court in the l a n d . " The memoirs set forth in considerable detail the various procedures of the Court, the role of the chief justice, the ways in which decisions are reached, how the opinion writers are designated, the interactions of the justices, and the necessity for making certain that decisions are not " l e a k e d " before opinions are reported to the public. There are comments on some of the landmark opinions that were reached during his tenure on the Court, including the one on school desegregation, and some of the public reactions to several of those decisions (Brown v. Board of Education, Baker v. Carr, Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, etc.). Perhaps the opinions that elicited the most scathing denunciations were those that outlawed separation or exclusion on the basis of race in the use of public facilities. Although Mr. Chief Justice Warren avers, " I made it a practice not to read the ' fan' mail concerning our cases, whether it arrived before or after decisions had been announced," he did read some of the letters that the Court had received following the Brown v. Board of Education Decision in 1954. " T o my surprise, there were only between six and seven hundred" of t h e m - about equally divided pro and con. President Eisenhower and many other leading Americans did not attempt to hide their displeasure with that decision. Eisenhower is reported to have lamented that appointing Earl Warren to the United States Supreme Court was one of the greatest mistakes he had ever m a d e . " Warren thought that Baker v. Cart [369 U.S. 186 ( 1962)], the Tennessee reapportionment case, was the most important case decided during his tenure on the Court. "'The reason I am of the opinion that Baker v. Carr is so important is because I believe so devoutly that, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln's famous epigram, ours is a government of all the people, by all the people, and forall the p e o p l e . " In Reynolds v. Sims, [377 U.S. 533 ( 1964)], another reapportionment case, speaking for a divided court ( 8 - 1 ) that held an Alabama legislative reapportionment plan to be violative of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the chief justice declared that "Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests. As long as ours is a representative form of government, and our legislatures are those instruments of government elected directly by and directly representative of the people, the right to elect legislators in a free and unimpaired fashion is a bedrock of our political s y s t e m . " He assigned most of the state reapportionment cases to himself because his experiences in California had convinced him that fair representation meant equal representation in which one man's vote had the same value as any other and that legislatures had to be elected on that basis according to the United States Constitution. He knew the Reynolds decision would create considerable controversy. The Council on State Governments conducted an organized campaign to neutralize that decision. It and others proposed a change in the process to amend the United States Constitution, and also, the establishment of a Court of the Union that could review and overthrow decisions of the United States Supreme Court, involving f e d e r a l - s t a t e relations. Warren avers that " T h e Court was under attack by powerful interests nearly all the time 1 was t h e r e . " In addition to its civil rights and reapportionment decisions, the Court came under attack for many of its ground-breaking holdings in the areas of criminal procedure, religious liberty, free speech, free press, industrial relations, and the regulation of business combinations. The John Birch
BOOK REVIEWS
371
Society; Senators Jenner of Indiana, Butler of Maryland, Joe McCarthy (the red-baiter); state's righters; organizations unhappy with the compulsory prayer ruling [Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962)]; believers in "Constitutional Government"; and electric power interests were among the front runners to discredit the Warren Court. Although the chief justice does not complain about the criticisms that were made---even those that suggested his impeachment--he felt let down because of the lethargic or indifferent stance taken by the American Bar Association. "The Court ~'eceived no support of any kind from the American Bar Association as we were pilloried and reviled . . . . Justices must take it [criticism] in silence, leaving it to the people to form their own opinions concerning the Court's actions. This limitation and others make the life of a Justice of the Supreme Court an austere one, yet I could generally accept denunciation as a part of the job without resentment, except for one phase of it. That phase was the treatment received from the American Bar Association . . . . " He later resigned from the membership of that association, the reasons for which are set forth in the memoirs. Chief Justice Warren explains the reluctance with which he consented to head the President's Commission which investigated the Kennedy assassination (The Warren Commission), and the procedures and conclusions of that body. He strongly defends the commission's conduct and conclusions. In the Epilogue, the editors inform us that Mr. Warren "had intended to provide further material and put a finer finish on what is here." He would have expanded on his Court years and would have discussed in greater detail his duties as chief justice with special reference to the administration of the court system, and his leadership in judicial conferences. He had also planned to share some of his experiences on the boards of the National Gallery and Smithsonian Institution, to write briefly on his travels and on his work with the World Peace Through Law Organization, from which he received its World Jurist Award in 1971 and its Human Rights Award in 1973. It is highly possible that he might have provided us with some helpful observations on such facets of the contemporary American scene as the future of the Court after his departure, the Watergate matter, and the need for international justice. Although the retired chief justice died before he could include the above, the memoirs are a valuable addition to what has previously been written about Earl Warren and the environment of which he was a part. The many behind-the-scenes revelations regarding the conduct and attitudes of contemporary American political leaders leave the reader with a more complete understanding of some of the underlying factors which influenced so many crucial public policies and/or decisions during the last forty or fifty years in the United States. The Prologue and the Epilogue are useful contributions to this easy to read and informative volume.
J. Erroll Miller Professor and Chairman Department of Forensic Studies Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47401