With Roberts starting the latest period of Supreme Court Chief Justices' tenure, perhaps it is appropriate to reflect on Justice Earl Warren's career.
A great man who overturned the "Jim Crow" laws. God bless him.
A giant amongst jurists.
But he was also a man who got a little full of himself, and ended up leading this country into the arms of the conservatives.
Why? Because he gave up on common sense.
Smart or dumb, liberal or conservative --everybody knows that a child killer (or other monsterous criminal) should not be set free to commit more crimes.
But Earl Warren said no.
Earl Warren said if that child killer was convicted because a policeman did not tell him of his constitutional right to remain silent, or was unlawfully searched, he must be set fee to do whatever it was he did again Which the criminal frequently did.
That was never the law before Earl Warren. And there were other practical alternatives to the dilemma (European countries never adopted this silly rule).
The common sense stupidity of this rule led eventually to the pervasiveness of the Fox News demagogues we see today.
What people don't get was that the "exclusionary rule" was never a hallmark of liberal ideology. It was invention of the court. Still it was liberalism's downfall.