Super Chief: Earl Warren and His Supreme Court- A Judicial Biography

This fascinating and exhaustive assessment of Earl Warren and his Supreme Court is certain to be the definitive biography of the man and his crucial role in American judicial history. It presents the most probing exploration to date of the inner workings of the Court and reveals how some of the most far-reaching decisions ever made were hammered out in highly secret conferences and proceedings. The study traces Warren's life from his childhood in Bakersfield, California, through his years as Alameda County District Attorney, Attorney General of the State of California (he served at the time of the Japanese evacuation in 1942), and his years as governor. His vice-presidential campaign of 1948 is described, as are the secret negotiations which led to his appointment as Chief Justice by President Eisenhower. The heart of the book is the extensively detailed account of the Court during the Warren years. The book offers the first account in such detail of the day-to-day workings of the Court. It is based on scores of interviews with all but one of the living members of the Warren Court, some 30 former Warren clerks, clerks of the other Justices, and Warren's family and friends. From these interviews and the private papers of the Justices and other Court personnel, the author has reconstructed the secret discussions within the Court and its shifts in thinking it arrived at the great decisions which created the constitutional revolution of the Warren years. There are painstaking, case-by-case recreations of the discussion from notes made in each instance by at least one Justice who was present and from the many thousands of notes, diaries, memoranda, draft opinions, and correspondence sifted through in preparation of this monumental work. Exhaustive, definitive, revealing, this is the account of the Supreme Court and its workings.