Law Commons^™

Justice-As-Fairness As Judicial Guiding Principle: Remembering John Rawls And The Warren Court, Michael Anthony Lawrence

Michael Anthony Lawrence

This Article looks back to the United States Supreme Court’s jurisprudence during the years 1953-1969 when Earl Warren served as Chief Justice, a period marked by numerous landmark rulings in the areas of racial justice, criminal procedure, reproductive autonomy, First Amendment freedom of speech, association and religion, voting rights, and more. The Article further discusses the constitutional bases for the Warren Court’s decisions, principally the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection and due process clauses.

The Article explains that the Warren Court’s equity-based jurisprudence closely resembles, at its root, the “justice-as-fairness” approach promoted in John Rawls’s monumental 1971 work, A Theory of …

How Earl Warren Previewed Today’S Civil Liberties Debate—And Got It Right In The End, Sandhya Ramadas

Sandhya Ramadas

Earl Warren is revered for his tenure as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and for his legacy as the icon of American civil liberties, but a dark moment lurked in his past. In late 1941 and early 1942, as the Attorney General of California, Warren confronted a host of difficult questions involving constitutional law, civil liberties, and race relations. With the United States still reeling from the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and with the dawn of the involvement of American combat troops in World War II, Warren advocated for the relocation and internment of both Japanese Americans and …