A key element of liberalism’s ascendancy emerged in the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren (1953–1969). In contrast to the federal courts of the Progressive Era and New Deal, which blocked reform, the Warren Court often moved ahead of Congress and public opinion. Expanding the Constitution’s promise of equality and individual rights, the Court’s decisions supported an activist government to prevent injustice and provided new protections to disadvantaged groups and accused criminals.

Following the pathbreaking Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision of 1954 (see “African Americans Challenge the Supreme Court and the President” in chapter 27), the Court struck down southern states’ maneuvers to avoid integration and defended civil rights activists’ rights to freedom of assembly and speech. In addition, a unanimous Court in Loving v. Virginia (1967) invalidated state laws banning interracial marriage, calling marriage one of the “basic civil rights of man.”

Chief Justice Warren considered Baker v. Carr (1963) his most important decision. The case grew out of a complaint that inequitably drawn Tennessee electoral districts gave sparsely populated rural districts far more representatives than densely populated urban areas. Using the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of “equal protection of the laws,” the Court established the principle of “one person, one vote” for state legislatures and for the House of Representatives. As states redrew electoral districts, legislatures became more responsive to metropolitan interests.

The Warren Court also reformed the criminal justice system, overturning a series of convictions on the grounds that the accused had been deprived of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment. In decisions that dramatically altered law enforcement practices, the Court declared that states, as well as the federal government, were subject to the Bill of Rights. Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) ruled that when an accused criminal could not afford to hire a lawyer, the state had to provide one. Miranda v. Arizona (1966) required police officers to inform suspects of their rights upon arrest. The Court also overturned convictions based on evidence obtained by unlawful arrest, by electronic surveillance, or without a search warrant. Critics accused the justices of “handcuffing the police” and letting criminals go free; liberals argued that these rulings promoted equal treatment in the criminal justice system.

The Court’s decisions on religion provoked even greater outrage. Abington School District v. Schempp (1963) ruled that requiring Bible reading and prayer in public schools violated the First Amendment principle of separation of church and state. Later judgments banned official prayer in public schools even if students were not required to participate. The Court’s supporters declared that the religion cases protected the rights of non-Christians and atheists. They noted that the Court left students free to pray on their own, but the decisions infuriated many Christians. Billboards demanding “Impeach Earl Warren” spoke for critics of the Court, who joined a larger backlash mounting against Great Society liberalism.