Dead Chief Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court

            This is a new category that I started a few years ago. There have been only 17 Chief Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States. With the passing of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, 16 are dead (which makes sense if you think about it). In August of 2005, I picked up two more dead Chief Justices in Toledo and Chicago to add to the three I already had. So, I have 11 to go (strangely enough, I first had the 5th, 10th and 15th). Later in the fall of 2005, I picked up number six, Charles Evens Hughes in the Bronx.
            Finding Chief Justices is easier to do since there are no DCJ's west of the Mississippi River. Also, there are four in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia (this is where Rehnquist was laid to rest) and two more in Washington D.C. One, William Taft, was a former president who I already have. While there are no DCJ's in New Jersey, there is one in the Bronx (who I now have).
   

John Jay	Morrison Waite	Frederick Moore Vinson
John Rutledge	Melville Fuller	Earl Warren
Oliver Ellsworth	Edward White	Warren Burger
John Marshall	William H. Taft	William Rehnquist
Roger Brooke Taney	Charles Evans Hughes	John Glover Roberts, Jr.
Salmon Portland Chase	Harlan Fiske Stone

 

Roger Brooke Taney 5th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Born: March 17, 1777 in Calvert County, Maryland  Served: March 15 1836 to October 12, 1864  Died: October 12, 1864 in Washington D.C.  Buried: St. John's Catholic Cemetery, Frederick, Maryland      In 2002, my wife, Debbie, along with our nephew Damian, and I took a trip to Frederick, Maryland. The purpose of the trip was to visit the Battlefield at Antietam. In that weekend, we visited four Civil War sites. Along with Antietam, we visited Harper's Ferry, Monacacy Battlefield and Gettysburg. After touring the Monacacy Battlefield (which took about a half-hour) outside of Frederick on Sunday morning, we then walked around the town. One of the places we visited was St. John's Cemetery. It is a small cemetery near the town center (Between E. 3rd & E. 4th Streets on East St.) with a few persons interred there. The most famous is Chief Justice Taney (pronounced Taw-ney) who becomes my 3rd Dead Chief Justice.      Taney was born of a wealthy slave-owning family of tobacco farmers on the Taney Plantation along the Patuxent River, in Maryland's Calvert County. His parents, Michael Taney and Monica Brooke, were Catholics. He graduated first in his class from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1795. Taney was admitted to the bar in 1799 and as a Federalist served (1799–1800) one term in the Maryland house of delegates. On January 7, 1806, he married Anne Phoebe Charlton Key, sister of Francis Scott Key (writer of the Star Spangled Banner). He temporarily broke with the Federalist leadership over the party's opposition to the War of 1812, but he gained control of the Federalists in Maryland and in 1816 was elected to a five-year term in the state senate. Having built up a large practice, Taney moved in 1823 from Frederick to Baltimore.     In 1824, he permanently abandoned the Federalists to support Andrew Jackson. In 1831, President Jackson appointed Taney to the post of Attorney General to assist in the struggle with the Bank of the United States (which Jackson loathed). The following year, Taney wrote much of Jackson's message vetoing the act that rechartered the bank, and, when Louis McLane and William J. Duane refused to withdraw federal funds from the bank, Taney was appointed, in 1833, Secretary of the Treasury and effected the withdrawal. However, his appointment to the office of Secretary of the Treasury having been made during a recess of Congress, his nomination was sent to the Senate by Jackson on June 23, 1834, and was rejected after a heated debate.     In 1835, President Jackson nominated Taney as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, replacing Judge Gabriel Duvall of Maryland who resigned. The United States Senate, incensed by Taney's actions as Secretary of the Treasury and opposed to Jackson politically, did not ratify his nomination. The following year, Jackson again nominated Taney, this time as Chief Justice, after the death of the legendary Chief Justice John Marshall. The nomination, despite Whig opposition led by Senators Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, was finally confirmed by a majority of only 14 votes.      Under the guidance of Judges John Jay, John Marshall and Joseph Story, the judiciary from 1790 to 1835 had followed the Federalist loose construction methods of interpreting the U.S. Constitution. The personnel of the supreme bench was almost entirely changed during President Jackson's administration (1829-37). Five of the seven judges in 1837, including Taney, were his appointees, and the majority of them were Southerners who had been educated under Democratic influences at a time when the slavery controversy was forcing the party to return to its original strict construction views of the Constitution.     His first big test came in 1837 with the Charles River Bridge Case. Taney's ruling angered many conservatives who thought he shouldn't modify the Dartmouth College Case, decided by Marshal in 1819. In 1841, Taney joined the majority of the Court in the Amistad Case, ruling that the rebelling Africans from the slave ship Amistad should be freed.      His position on slavery is interesting. Born into a slave-owning family, he freed the slaves he inherited from his father early in his life. He spoke out against slavery, saying "Slavery is a blot on our national character, and every real lover of freedom confidently hopes that it will be effectually, though it must be gradually, wiped away." He would have liked to see slavery abolished, however gradually. Many people have called him a supporter of slavery because of his upholding of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 against the arguments of the Northern states. However, he was upholding the right of Congress to pass laws that states were obligated to follow.     Undoubtedly,  his most controversial decision came in 1857, with the Dred Scott Case (Scott v. Sandford). In 1834, Dred Scott, a black slave, was taken by his owner, a U.S. Army surgeon, to Illinois, a free state,  and then Minnesota, a free territory, before returning to Missouri in 1838. After the doctors death, Scott sued for his freedom, saying that since he lived in states and territories that were "Free" he too should be free. After a lower court in St. Louis agreed, the decision was reversed by the Missouri Supreme Court. It was appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court. It was here that Taney made his highly controversial and inflammatory decision. The Courts decision, by a vote of 7 to 2, was that; one, they held that slaves (and even the free descendants of slaves) were not citizens and could not sue in the federal courts, two, blacks were only property and most damaging of all, that Congress had no authority to abolish slavery anywhere in the United States and that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional because it violated slaveholders Fifth Amendment Right to protection of private property guaranteed in the Constitution.     In one sweeping decision, Taney and the Supreme Court, erased years of compromise over the slavery issue. Slavery was made legal in every state despite Northern states ruling otherwise. Northerners were outraged while Southerners celebrated. One of the two dissenters, Justice Benjamin Curtis of Massachusetts (the other being Justice John McLean of New Jersey), was so angered by the opinion of the majority that he resigned from the Supreme Court. The court's verdict further inflamed the sectional controversy between North and South and pushed the country closer to Civil War. This single opinion cast a shadow over Taney's distinguished legal career and his personal reputation for integrity. He was attacked by Republicans in Congress because he was a Southerner, even though he personally opposed slavery. Taney was still Chief Justice when the Civil War began in 1861. When Lincoln became President he considered Taney an arch foe. In the Civil War, Taney in vain ruled against Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.      Plagued all of his life with ill health, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney died on October 12, 1864 at the age of 87 after serving as Chief Justice for 28 years. Since it was during the Civil War, he was unmourned by most Northerners who could not forget the Dred Scott Decision. The ironic thing is that Taney passed the most abhorrent Supreme Court decision in the history of our country, but was opposed to the institution itself. However, he was also a believer in individual rights. The contradiction was that there was no legal way to abolish the institution of slavery without trampling on the rights of slaveholders, something he refused to do.     Abraham Lincoln nominated his Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase to succeed Taney as Chief Justice.     He is buried in St. John's Catholic Cemetery next to his mother. There is a statue to Taney on the grounds of the Statehouse in Annapolis, Maryland (which is a great place to tour - not to mention crab cakes in Annapolis). While in Frederick, you can visit the Roger Brooke Taney House at 121 S. Bentz Street. The grounds include the family’s living quarters, a summer kitchen and the slaves’ quarters. Their hours are on Saturday from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM and Sunday from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM. These hours run from April through mid-December. Tours are available at other times and months by appointment. The phone number is  (301) 663-1188. In 2005, they will be celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Roger Brooke Taney House. Here are some webpages of interest: Roger Brooke Taney and the Case of Dred Scott Sculpture in the U.S. Capital Building Frederick County Tourism TOP

Morrison Waite 7th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Born: November 29, 1816 in Lyme, Connecticut Served: March 4, 1874 to March 23, 1888 Died: March 23, 1888 in Washington D.C. Buried: Woodlawn Cemetery, Toledo, Ohio      In August of 2005, my wife Debbie and I drove to Chicago for a vacation. On the way and during our stay, we visited the sites of two former Chief Justices of the United States. After spending the night in Sandusky, Ohio, we drove to Toledo on a bright Sunday morning.  Woodlawn Cemetery is one of those old landscaped Victorian cemeteries in the northern part of the city. We had little trouble finding Judge Waite, who was in section 42 overlooking a small lake, who became Dead Chief Justice number four.     Morrison Remick Waite was born in Connecticut, the son of Henry Matson Waite (1787-1869), who would become a judge of the superior court and associate judge of the supreme court of Connecticut from 1834 to 1854 and was elevated to chief justice in 1854 until 1857.      Waite graduated from Yale in 1837, and soon afterwards removed to Maumee City, Ohio, where he studied law in the office of Samuel L. Young and was admitted to the bar in 1839. The following year, Waite married Amelia Warner. In 1850 he removed to Toledo, and he soon came to be recognized as a leader of the state bar. In politics, Waite was a Whig legislator in Ohio in the late 1840s, and helped found the Republican Party in Ohio in 1856. He was a successful lawyer, but not known outside of Ohio. Waite came to national attention in 1871 when he was appointed, with William M. Evarts and Caleb Cushing, to represent the United States before the Geneva Arbitration Panel. The lawyers were successful, gaining a $15 million award. In 1874, he presided over the Ohio constitutional convention.            In the same year he was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant to succeed Judge Salmon P. Chase, who had died the previous year, as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and he held this position until his death at Washington DC, in 1888. In the cases which grew out of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and especially in those which involved the interpretation of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, he sympathized with the general tendency of the court to restrict the further extension of the powers of the Federal government. He concurred with the majority in the Head Money Cases (1884), the Ku-Klux Case (United States v. Harris, 1882), the Civil Rights Cases (1883) and the Juillard v. Greenman (legal tender) Case (1883). Among his own most important decisions were those in the Enforcement Act Cases (1875), the Sinking Fund Case (1878), the Railroad Commission Cases (1886) and the Telephone Cases (1887).            He wrote the Court's opinion in  Munn v. Illinois, in which the Court sustained an Illinois law regulating maximum rates of grain elevators (where grain was stored before it was shipped from Chicago elsewhere), on the ground that the grain elevator business was "affected with a public interest." Waite was also the author of the Court's decision in Reynolds v. United States (1879), in which the Court upheld the criminalization of polygamy in the Territory of Utah.            On March 23, 1888, Waite died after being stricken by a severe case of pneumonia. Crowds of people gathered and formed a memorial procession when his body arrived in Toledo from Washington D.C. Waite was laid to rest at Woodlawn Cemetery. A memorial to Waite in the Toledo is the Waite High School. After his death in 1888, President Grover Cleveland nominated Democrat state legislator Melville Fuller of Illinois to be Chief Justice. TOP

Melville Fuller 8th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Born: February 11, 1833 in Augusta, Maine Served: July 11, 1921 to July 4, 1910 Died: July 4, 1910 in Washington D.C. Buried: Graceland Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois      In August of 2005, my wife Debbie and I drove to Chicago for a vacation. On the way and during our stay, we visited the sites of two former Chief Justices of the United States. One morning during our week in Chicago, we drove to Chicago's Northside to Graceland Cemetery to visit Fuller. We found him easily enough and he became my 5th Dead Chief Justice.      Fuller attended college at Bowdoin College, graduating in 1853. Both his maternal grandfather, Nathan Weston and paternal grandfather, Henry Weld Fuller were judges. His father was a well-known lawyer. His parents divorced shortly after his birth, and he was raised by Nathan Weston. After finishing school, he studied law under the direction of an uncle. In 1855, he went into partnership with another uncle. He also became the editor of The Age, a leading Democratic newspaper in Maine. In 1858, he married Calista Reynolds (who died in 1864). He married Mary Coolbaugh in 1866. Soon he tired of Maine and moved to Chicago.         At the time, Chicago was becoming the gateway to the West. Railroads had just linked it to the east. Fuller built a law practice in Chicago. Within two years, he appeared before the Supreme Court of Illinois in the case of Beach vs. Derby. He became a leading attorney in the city. He first appeared before the United States Supreme Court in the case of Traders' Bank vs Campbell. He also argued the case of Tappan vs the Merchants' National Bank of Chicago, which was the first case heard by Chief Justice Morrison Waite, whom he would later replace. He was a minor figure in Illinois politics. He spent one term in the Illinois House of Representatives and was a delegate at the national Democratic Conventions of 1864, 1872, 1876, and 1880. In 1876, he made the nominating speech for Thomas Hendricks, for the Democratic electoral vote for President.       President Grover Cleveland nominated him for the Chief Justice position when Morrison Waite died in 1888. His nomination was lukewarm in the Senate. However, he was eventually confirmed by a vote of 41 to 20, with nine Republicans voting with the Democrats. On the bench, he oversaw a number of important opinions. He declared the income tax law unconstitutional. In Western Union Telegraph Company vs. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania he ruled that states could not tax interstate telegraph messages. He also served on the Arbitration Commission in Paris in 1899 to resolve a boundary dispute between the United Kingdom and Venezuela.        He was said to closely resemble Mark Twain. Once, when the humorist was stopped on the street a passerby demanded the Chief Justice's autograph. Twain supposedly wrote: "It is delicious to be full, but it is heavenly to be Fuller. I am cordially yours, Melville W. Fuller."         After his death in 1910, President William Howard Taft nominated former Democratic Governor of Louisiana Edward Douglass White to be Chief Justice. TOP

William Howard Taft 10th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Born: September 15, 1857 in Cincinnati, Ohio Served: July 11, 1921 to February 3, 1930 Died: March 8, 1930 in Washington D.C. Buried: Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia      Since Taft was also President of the United States, I already had him. By the way, Taft is the only president to become a member of the Supreme Court. I picked him up on one of many visits to Arlington National Cemetery so he holds the distinction of being the first Dead Chief Justice on my list.     Both Taft's father and his grandfather were famous judges. After graduating in 1878 from Yale University, Taft attended the law school at the University of Cincinnati. On June 19, 1886, Taft married Helen "Nellie" Herron. He began practicing law in Ohio in 1880. By 1887, Taft was a superior court judge. In 1889, at age 32, Taft had the temerity to urge others to convince President Benjamin Harrison, a lawyer, to appoint him to the Court. Harrison declined, nominating David Brewer instead. But Taft did win appointment to the position of Solicitor General of the United States. After three years as solicitor general, Taft was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. In 1900, Taft was appointed to the Philippine Commission, created after the War of 1898 led to the cession of the Philippines to the United States by Spain. Taft remained in the Philippines for four years, eventually serving as Governor General.      In 1904, Taft was appointed Secretary of War by President Teddy Roosevelt, and by 1907 had decided that Taft should be his successor. The Republican Convention nominated him the next year.     Taft disliked the campaign, "one of the most uncomfortable four months of my life." But he pledged his loyalty to the Roosevelt program, popular in the West, while his brother Charles reassured eastern Republicans. William Jennings Bryan, running on the Democratic ticket for a third time, complained that he was having to oppose two candidates, a western progressive Taft and an eastern conservative Taft. Taft won the presidential election.     Progressives were pleased with Taft's election. "Roosevelt has cut enough hay," they said; "Taft is the man to put it into the barn." Conservatives were delighted to be rid of Roosevelt, who they called the "mad messiah." However, Taft was not a successful President. Unlike Roosevelt, Taft did not believe in the stretching of Presidential powers.  Taft alienated many liberal Republicans who later formed the Progressive Party, by defending the Payne-Aldrich Act which unexpectedly continued high tariff rates. He further antagonized Progressives by upholding his Secretary of the Interior, accused of failing to carry out Roosevelt's conservation policies.      In the angry Progressive onslaught against him, little attention was paid to the fact that his administration initiated 80 antitrust suits and that Congress submitted to the states amendments for a federal income tax and the direct election of Senators. A postal savings system was established and the Interstate Commerce Commission was directed to set railroad rates.      Teddy Roosevelt was so frustrated with Taft's leadership that he ran for President in 1912 on the Bull Moose ticket, which allowed the Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win with a plurality of the popular vote (but a majority of the electoral vote).       After his defeat in 1912, Taft returned to his alma mater, Yale, to teach law. In 1921, the Republicans once again occupied the White House. President Harding nominated Taft to the position of Chief Justice after the death of Edward White, whom Taft had appointed to that position. The Senate confirmed Taft's nomination the same day it was sent to it. Thus Taft became the only person to serve as both President and as  Justice of the Supreme Court. (John Quincy Adams declined a nomination to the Court before he became President in 1825.)     Taft was a conservative judge who distrusted reform legislation that he believed too radical. In Truax v. Corrigan in, Taft wrote the Court's opinion declaring unconstitutional Arizona's efforts to limit the issuance of much despised injunctions (used against labor unions) by judges during a labor strike. Taft saw the legislation as too heavily favoring labor. Taft also wrote an opinion for the Court declaring unconstitutional a congressional effort to outlaw child labor through use of the taxing power. Taft did dissent in Adkins v. Children's Hospital in 1923, which held unconstitutional a minimum wage law for women in the District of Columbia. Taft was an able judicial administrator, whose lobbying led to the passage of the Judiciary Act of 1925. This Act granted to the Court an extraordinary discretion in its caseload.     Taft resigned from the Court due to illness in February of 1930. He died a month later. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery (Section 30, Lot S-11). His widow, Helen Herron Taft, was buried beside him May 25, 1943. Taft never liked being the Chief Executive and always considered being a Supreme Court Justice as being the highpoint of his life. He once said,  "I don't remember that I ever was President."    After his resignation in 1930, President Herbert Hoover nominated former associate justice Charles Evans Hughes of New York to be Chief Justice. Here are some webpages of interest: William Howard Taft National Historic Site White House Biography of William H. Taft The Internet Public Library Biography The American President Biography White House Biography of Helen Herron Taft TOP

Charles Evans Hughes 11th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Born: April 11, 1862 in Glens Falls, New York Served: February 24, 1930 to June 30, 1941 Died: August 27, 1948 in Osterville, Massachusetts Buried: Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York         Back in the fall of 2005, Debbie and I took a ride over to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx to pick up my 6th Dead Chief Justice. Woodlawn is one of those well manicured victorian style cemeteries. Opened in 1863, it is, at 400 acres, one of the largest cemeteries in New York City. Built on rolling hills, its tree-lined roads lead to a number of very unique memorials. In addition to Hughes, there are many other famous people buried here including (including a number of Jazz musicians): Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Lionel Hampton, W.C. Handy, Irving Berlin, Damon Runyon, Fiorello LaGuardia, Herman Melville, Otto Preminger, Joseph Pulitzer, Jay Gould, David Farragut and Titanic victim Isidor Straus.         Charles Evens Hughes was a precocious youngster. At age six he found public school boring and confining, and submitted to his parents a plan of study for homeschooling, which his parents accepted. Shortly before his 12th birthday, his family moved from Glens Falls, New York to New York City, where his parents enrolled him in public school, and he graduated from high school at age 13, second in his class. His father was a Baptist minister from Wales, so he too followed the Baptist religion.         He went to Madison College (now Colgate University) for two years (where he became a member of Delta Upsilon Fraternity), then transferred to Brown University, where he continued as a member of Delta Upsilon Fraternity, where he graduated in 1881 at age 19, youngest in his class, receiving third-highest honors. For the next year, he worked at Delaware Academy, in Delhi, New York where he taught Greek, Latin and algebra, in order to earn money to enter law school. He entered Columbia University law school in 1882, and graduated in 1884 with highest honors.         In 1885 he met Antoinette Carter, daughter of a senior partner of the law firm where he worked, and married her in 1888. In 1891 he left the practice of law to become a professor at Cornell University Law School, but in 1893 he returned to his old law firm.          In 1905 he was appointed counsel to a New York state legislative committee investigating utility rates. He uncovered corruption to get gas rates lowered in New York City. As a result, he was appointed to investigate the insurance industry in New York.         A Republican, Hughes was elected Governor of New York, defeating William Randolph Hearst (52%-48%) in the 1906 election (he was the only Republican statewide candidate to win office). In 1908 he was offered the vice-presidential nomination by William Howard Taft, but declined it to run again for Governor. He successfully won re-election over the Democratic challenger, Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler by an even bigger margin then in 1906.         In 1909 he led the charge to incorporate Delta Upsilon Fraternity and created a headquarters for the organization in Indianapolis, Indiana. He served as the first International president of the Fraternity which was the first fraternity to incorporate. On October 6, 1909, He left the Governors Mansion in Albany during his second term for the Supreme Court and was succeeded by Lieutenant Governor Horace White of Syracuse.         On October 10, 1910, he was appointed an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court by William Taft to replace Justice David Josiah Brewer who had died earlier that year. During that time, he wrote for the Court in Bailey v. Alabama (1911), which held that involuntary servitude encompassed more that just slavery. On June 16, 1916, he resigned from the Supreme Court to be the Republican candidate for President of the United States, however he was defeated by Woodrow Wilson in a close election. Hughes carried the Northeast and the Midwest receiving 254 electoral votes and 8,538,221 or 46% of the popular votes (losing California decided the election against him). Hughes was replaced on the Supreme Court by John Hessin Clarke of Ohio. After his defeat, he returned to private practice.           In 1921, Hughes became the Secretary of State in Warren G. Harding's administration (and later Coolidge's after Harding's death) and served until 1925. During his time as Secretary of State, he convened the Washington Conference in 1921, regulating naval armament among the Great Powers. After this, he returned to private practice and argued over 50 cases before the Supreme Court. Herbert Hoover, who had appointed Hughes' son as Solicitor General in 1929, appointed Hughes Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court on February 24, 1930 to replace William Taft who had resigned on February 3.           As Chief Justice, he led the fight against Franklin D. Roosevelt's attempt to pack the Supreme Court. Hughes was considered a moderate conservative on the Court. He wrote the opinion for the Court in Near v. Minnesota (1931), which held prior restraints against the press are unconstitutional. He was often aligned with the "Three Musketeers", Justices Louis Brandeis, Harlan Fiske Stone and Benjamin Cardozo (they were considered to be the liberal faction of the Supreme Court), in finding President Roosevelt's New Deal measures to be Constitutional. Although he wrote the opinion invalidating the National Recovery Administration in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935), he wrote the opinions for the Court in NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. (1937), NLRB v. Friedman-Harry Marks Clothing Co. (1937) and West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937) which looked favorably on New Deal Measures.           Hughes retired from the Supreme Court on June 30, 1941. Roosevelt elevated Associate Justice Harlan Fiske Stone of New Hampshire to Chief Justice.           Hughes is the only Chief Justice to have sworn in the same man as President three times - Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933, 1937 and 1941). Here are some webpages of interest: Woodlawn Cemetery TOP

 

Warren Earl Burger 15th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Born: September 17, 1907 in St. Paul, Minnesota  Served: June 23, 1969 to September 26, 1986  Died: June 25, 1995 in Alexandria, Virginia  Buried: Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia      Since Burger is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, he was easy to find. I took the picture before I had any idea that I was going to make a site like this. I took the picture back in 1996, when we took the hockey team to Washington D.C. during Christmas break to play in a tournament. During our trip, Cory Robinson, our team manager Nick Winkle and myself took a tour of Arlington allowing me to get these pictures. Burger is easy to find since he is in a section (Section 5 - near the John F. Kennedy gravesite) that has a number of Justices of the Supreme Court buried. Also in Section 5 are Chief Justice Warren Earl Burger, Associate Justices Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennen Jr., William Douglas, Potter Stewart, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Thurgood Marshall. Other Justices in Arlington are Arthur Goldberg (Sec. 21), Hugo Black (Sec. 30)  and the future site for current Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. I wasn't looking for Dead Chief Justices at the time so Burger inadvertently became my second one.     Burger earned his degrees from the University of Minnesota and the St. Paul College of Law at night, working days by working as an insurance salesman to support himself. In 1933, he married Elvera Stromberg. In private practice in the Twin Cities, he also taught law and became involved in electoral politics floor-managing the 1948 and 1952 presidential bids of Harold Stassen at the Republican National Conventions. Burger came to Washington to serve as Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department and was named by President Dwight Eisenhower to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1955.      In May 1968, lame duck President Lyndon Baines Johnson nominated Associate Justice Abe Fortas to the position of Chief Justice, replacing Earl Warren who was retiring. Fortas's nomination stalled in the Senate, and the newly elected President, Republican Richard Nixon, fulfilled a promise to appoint Supreme Court Justices who were "strict constructionists" of the Constitution by nominating Burger. However, The Burger Court did not roll back the Warren Court revolution.       Burger sought to improve the administration of justice in the United States as much through reform of administrative procedures and court management and efficiency as through the more than 250 decisions he authored and the votes he cast and the cases he had brought before the court. However, Burger was not a leader within the Court. During his tenure as Chief Justice, somewhere around 20% of decided cases were by a bare (usually 5-4) majority.     There were a number of landmark cases decided by the Burger Court. These included; Lemon v. Kurtzman (state aid to church-related schools was ruled unconstitutional) in 1971, Roe v. Wade (making abortions legal) and Miller v. California (defining obscenity) both in 1973 and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke in 1974 (affirmative action). Burger is perhaps best known for authoring the unanimous opinion in 1974 that required Nixon to surrender White House tape recordings and papers that had been subpoenaed for use in Watergate cover-up trials in United States v. Nixon.     Burger served 17 years in office before resigning from the Supreme Court to accept an appointment as the unpaid chairman of the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, through which he championed the rule of law as it developed under the Magna Carta, the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights.     Burger was, by all accounts, a very competent administrator who made the Court's work more efficient. He was also a tireless promoter of judicial reform, including promoting a national court of appeals and working to increase the competence of lawyers trying cases in federal court.      After his death, Burger was buried in Arlington National Cemetery (Section 5, Lot 7015-2, Grid W-36) with his wife Elvera who had died the year before. President Ronald Reagan elevated Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist to be Chief Justice. Here are some webpages of interest: Warren E. Burger Library TOP

Links to other Supreme Court sites:

Supreme Court of the United States (official site)

The Supreme Court Historical Society

Find-A-Grave site for US Supreme Court Justices

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