Earl Warren and the Brown Decision

Abstract

If asked to name the most important decision made by the Supreme Court during the Chief Justiceship of Earl Warren, the layman could be excused if he answered quickly: the decision about segregation in the Brown case. For it is that decision that marked the new Chief Justice in 1954 as a major force in the American constitutional system. It is that decision that gave the Court's work a tenor and a tone that was to characterize it throughout Warren's tenure. When Warren himself was asked the same question in 1968, he selected Brown v. Board of Education' as one of the two most important cases decided by his Court, placing it only behind