Earl Warren was appointed as Chief Justice Of the United States when he was 62, by President Eisenhower, who saw in him (as we all did) a dependable, conservative Republican, an old District Attorney very much for God and mother and very much against sin, crime national health insurance, the Communists and the Democrats. Eisenhower came to say that the appointment of Warren was “The biggest damn-fool mistake I ever made”.

Within eight months of Warren’s appointment the Court was faced with the historic case of the little black girl who had to walk two mile to a segregated school (the case of Brown V. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas). And the Court ordered the integrating of whites and blacks in American public schools, and so set off the charge for the black revolution of out day.

The majority opinion was written by Earl Warren. He went on to champion the rights of accused criminals to have free legal aid, and even the right of convicted criminals to be released if they were not told, at the moment of arrest, of this new privilege. He helped to reshape the old election districts of the country that had manifestly ignored dramatic shifts in population.

What produced this profound shift of sympathy, this chemical change in his character? We are on the dangerous ground of amateur psychiatry. But I hazard a guess. When he was about twelve or thirteen, there was a workers’ strike on the Southern Pacific railroad. His father was one of it ringleaders. The men stayed out for the best part of a year. Warren recalled in private many years later: “We had a hard time of it in out home getting enough food to eat”.

This trauma must have faded, as such things will in healthy boys. But not long after his appointment to the Court, I imagine, he must have sometime thought about the time when he was one of the people, the hungry people, in opposition. Anyway, some subdued element of his character rose to the surface and transformed him. And he became, according to taste, either the heroic judge of our time or the “biggest damn-fool mistake” Eisenhower ever made.