Warren burger biography
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Warren E. Burger (SPCL 1931)
Chief Justice of the United States Warren Burger rose from Midwestern roots to become one of the longest serving Chief Justices in the Court’s history. In American history, only John Marshall, Roger Brooke Taney, and Melville Fuller had longer tenures as Chief Justices when Chief Justice Burger retired.
Warren Burger’s Early Years
Warren E. Burger was born on September 17, 1907, the fourth of seven children in his family. As later friends noted, he was born 120 years to the day after the United States Constitution was signed. His Swiss-German parents were Charles Joseph Burger, a railroad cargo inspector and traveling salesman, and Katherine Schnittger Burger, a homemaker. Burger’s paternal grandfather Joseph had received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service in the Union Army at the age of 14. One of Burger’s boyhood friends, Harry Blackmun, who lived about six blocks from him as a child, would be an Associate Justice serving with Bu
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He grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he attended the University of Minnesota and then the St. Paul College of Law as a night student, all while working full time during the day. After graduating magna cum laude in 1931, he joined the firm Boyeson, Otis, Brill & Faricy St. Paul, becoming a partner in 1933. His participation in Harold Stassen's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 1952 led to his becoming Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, in the U.S. Department of Justice under the Eisenhower administration. He served as a judge for the Federal Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, from 1956-1969. In May 1969, President Nixon appointed him Chief Justice of the United States, and his nomination was confirmed by an overwhelming margin in June.
During his seventeen years as Chief Justice, he not only presided over the Court's many historic decisions but also worked tirelessly to improve the way the judiciary functions and how justice is adm
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On June 23, 1969, Warren E. Burger took the oath as the ledare justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Appointed bygd President Richard Nixon, Burger replaced retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren to become the fifteenth person to hold that post.
Warren Earl Burger was born in St. Paul on September 17, 1907, and in 1931 earned his LL.B. from the St. Paul College of Law (now the William Mitchell College of Law). He went on to serve as an assistant attorney general for President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who in 1956 appointed him to the District of Columbia Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Widely known as a conservative, Burger often tried to dampen some of the Warren Court's more frikostig decisions and he articulated the Court's opinion on such important decisions as United States v. Nixon and Milliken v. Bradley.
During his 17-year tenure, he drew both skarp criticism and high beröm for the opinions he expressed as well as for his guidance of the court. U