October 5, 1953: Earl Warren is appointed Chief Justice

October 5, 1953: Earl Warren is appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. President Dwight D. Eisenhower made the appointment. He would have preferred not to.

Earl Warren (no middle name) was born on March 19, 1891 in Los Angeles, and grew up in Bakersfield, California. He graduated from the University of California, and served in the U.S. Army in World War I, rising to the rank of 1st Lieutenant. He remained in the Army Reserve, rising to the rank of Captain.

He clerked for the Judiciary Committee of the California Assembly, became a Deputy City Attorney for Oakland, a Deputy District Attorney for Oakland's Alameda County, and then started running for office. He was elected District Attorney for Alameda County in 1924, and continually re-elected until 1938, when he was elected Attorney General of California, also serving 6 years as Chair of the State's Republican Party.

In 1942, 1946 and 1950, he was elected Governor. (California didn't limit its Governors and other major State offices to 2 terms until 1992.) In 1944, he was considered for the Vice Presidential nomination at the Republican Convention, and he got it in 1948. He received no blame for the defeat of the Presidential nominee, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, and was considered a front-runner for 1952. He did not run, because General Dwight D. Eisenhower was too popular.

But "Ike" wouldn't have it easy: The conservative wing of the party wanted Senator Robert Taft of Ohio. Ike needed the support of the California delegation, which Warren controlled, and so he promised Warren the first vacancy on the Supreme Court in return. Warren agreed, Ike got the nomination, and won the general election.

But when Chief Justice Fred Vinson died in office on September 8, 1953, Ike tried to welch on his deal, telling Warren he meant the first vacancy for Associate Justice. He even offered the Chief Justice post to Dewey, who declined. Warren threatened to reveal the deal, which would have seriously damaged Ike's reputation -- not that he made such a deal, but that he broke it.

Ike decided that, no matter how popular he was, it wasn't worth finding out if Warren was bluffing. He made the appointment, and, despite 3 Southern Senators opposing him on the Judiciary Committee, the full Senate confirmed him by a vote of acclamation: No vote, just an overwhelming advantage of "Yea" votes.

Eventually, Ike would say his two greatest mistakes as President were appointing Warren and Bill Brennan to the Court. But those were political mistakes, not real mistakes. They turned out to be two of the best Justices ever.

The Warren Court (the Supreme Court is often named after the Chief Justice) took America forward in civil rights: For nonwhite people, for women, and for innocent people charged with crimes. It was Warren who insisted that Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 case that struck down public school segregation based on race, be a unanimous vote, and managed to persuade the last holdout Justice, Stanley Reed, to join the 9-0 opinion.

If I were going to make my all-time nine-person Supreme Court, it would include Warren and 3 Justices who served with him: Brennan, William O. Douglas and, for about a year and a half starting in late 1967, Thurgood Marshall.

As Governor in 1946 when Richard Nixon was first elected to the House of Representatives from a District in California, in 1950 when Nixon was elected to the Senate, and in 1952 when Nixon was elected Vice President, Warren knew Nixon well, and didn't trust him. He was not happy about having to swear Nixon into office as President in 1969, or about Nixon getting to appoint his successor, Warren Burger.

Warren wanted to retire in 1968, but due to political circumstances, stayed on until 1969. He died on July 9, 1974, at the age of 83, knowing that Nixon's impeachment, or his resignation to avoid that, was likely, but a month before the resignation actually happened.

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October 5, 1953 was a Monday. The New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers, 4-3 at Yankee Stadium, when Billy Martin singled Hank Bauer home in the bottom of the 9th inning, to win Game 6, and thus the World Series. It was their 5th straight World Championship, a feat never done before or since in baseball. I have a separate entry for that event.

This was before Monday Night Football, so there were no football games. It was too early to start the new NBA and NHL seasons. So there were no other scores on this historic day.