The Law: Earl Warren's Way: Is It Fair?

One man, one vote. If Earl Warren had to choose one memorial, it would undoubtedly be the decisions of his Supreme Court affirming that principle. There were others—school desegregation and the broadening of criminal suspects' rights, for instance—that also changed political and judicial history.

Yet Warren was not an ideologue or a radical. Rather he was a pragmatist who came to the bench with no preconceived vision or grand design, no strongly held or elaborately developed theory of society or even the law itself. He did right as he learned to see...