Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Congressional caucuses Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Social media Miscellaneous Other Warren Earl Burger (September 17, 1907 – June 25, 1995) was an American attorney who served as the 15th chief justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986.

After Eisenhower won the 1952 presidential election, he appointed Burger to the position of Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Division.

Later analyses have suggested that Burger joined the majority in Roe solely to prevent Justice William O. Douglas from controlling assignment of the opinion.

His parents, Katharine (née Schnittger) and Charles Joseph Burger, a traveling salesman and railroad cargo inspector,[citation needed] were of Austrian German descent.

[5] His grandfather, Joseph Burger, was born in Bludenz, Vorarlberg, had emigrated from Tyrol, Austria and joined the Union Army when he was 13.

[7] He graduated in 1925, and received a partial scholarship to attend Princeton University, which he declined because his family's finances were not sufficient to cover the remainder of his expenses.

[7] That same year, Burger also worked with the crew building the Robert Street Bridge, a crossing of the Mississippi River in Saint Paul that still exists.

[7] He also served as president of St. Paul's Council on Human Relations, which considered ways to improve the relationship between the city's police department and its minority residents.

[9] At the 1952 Republican National Convention, Burger played a key role in Dwight D. Eisenhower's nomination by leading the Minnesota delegates to change their votes from Stassen to Eisenhower after Stassen failed to obtain 10 percent of the vote, which freed the Minnesota delegation from their pledge to support him.

President Eisenhower appointed Burger as the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Division of the Justice Department.

Burger was nominated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 12, 1956, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated by Judge Harold M. Stephens.

[15] Remaking the Supreme Court had been a theme in Nixon's presidential campaign,[10] and he had pledged to appoint a strict constructionist as Chief Justice.

Nixon's agreement with these views, being expressed by a readily confirmable, sitting federal appellate judge, led to the nomination.

A few years later, Burger was on Nixon's short list of vice presidential candidates following the resignation of Spiro Agnew in October 1973, before Gerald Ford was appointed to succeed him.

The Court issued a unanimous ruling, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), supporting busing to reduce de facto racial segregation in schools.

In the most controversial ruling of his term, Roe v. Wade (1973), Burger voted with the majority to recognize a broad right to privacy that prohibited states from banning abortions.

[21] However, the other justices were able to convince Burger to excise that language from the opinion: the judicial branch alone would have the power to determine whether something can be shielded under an assertion of executive privilege.

The Court upheld the constitutionality of Individual Education Plans, but also held that the school district did not have to provide every service necessary in order to maximize a child's potential.

In Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha (1983), he held for the majority that Congress could not reserve a legislative veto over executive branch actions.

[25] Burger also began a tradition of annually delivering a State of the Judiciary speech to the American Bar Association, many of whose members had been alienated by the Warren Court.

"Burger repeatedly irked his colleagues by changing his vote to remain in the majority, and by rewarding his friends with choice assignments and punishing his foes with dreary ones.

[28] Clerks mocked him for his perceived egotism and intense homophobia, and Justice Lewis Powell allegedly referred to him as "the great white doughnut", an attack on both his intellect and physical appearance.

In 1971, President Nixon considered nominating California state Appellate Judge Mildred Lillie to the Supreme Court.

[39][40] Burger's language mobilized gay rights advocates to work to overturn sodomy laws, eventually succeeding in the 2003 case Lawrence v.

[41] Burger left office on September 26, 1986,[15] in part to lead the campaign to mark the bicentennial of the United States Constitution.

In a 1991 appearance on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, Burger stated that the notion that the Second Amendment guaranteed an unlimited individual right to obtain any kind of weapon "has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word 'fraud,' on the American public by special interest groups".

[46] All of his papers were donated to the College of William and Mary, where he had served as Chancellor; however, they will not be open to the public until ten years after the death of Sandra Day O'Connor in 2033-2034, the last surviving member of the Burger Court, per the donor agreement.

Burger is often cited as one of the foundational proponents of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), particularly in its ability to ameliorate an overloaded justice system.