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“TRIBUTE TO FORMER CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN E. BURGER” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S9335-S9336 on June 29, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TRIBUTE TO FORMER CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN E. BURGER
Mr. HEFLIN. Mr. President, America lost one of its great constitutional thinkers and jurists with the death of former Chief Justice Warren Earl Burger on Sunday, June 25. He served as Chief Justice for 17 years, longer than any other in this century. While he pointed the Court toward a more centrist course during his tenure, he nevertheless presided at a time when the Supreme Court was still seen as being at the forefront of social change in this country.
As my colleagues know, I have an abiding interest in judicial administration, and I always looked to Justice Burger as a true leader in improving the administration of justice. My term as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court coincided with his as the U.S. Chief Justice. He was a tremendous help with our efforts to pass the judicial article and with the court reform movement in our State. He was keenly interested in judicial education not only for legal professionals, but for people from all walks of life, believing that knowledge of the system could help individuals improve their lives.
Chief Justice Burger advocated the unified court system for States and founded the National Center for State Courts. He helped organize State and Federal judicial councils to ease the friction that tended to result between State and Federal courts at the time.
He developed the Federal Judicial Center, an educational and research arm for the Federal court system. He persuaded Senior Judge Alfred Murrah--for whom the Federal building in Oklahoma City was named--to serve as head of the Judicial Center. Judge Murrah's leadership resulted in enormous strides for the center. Justice Burger was also a strong supporter of the National College of the Judiciary.
We might say that Justice Burger's passion was more the overall administration of the law as opposed to the hard substance of the law. He believed that the process of the law was important to preserving its substance. He strove to make the courts run better. He pushed Congress to create more judgeships and to raise judges' salaries. To help eliminate congestion and reduce case backlog, he promoted the streamlining of court procedures. He has been called the guiding force in helping State courts improve their judicial administration.
Born in St. Paul, MN, Warren Burger spent his early life on a farm. He worked his way through the University of Minnesota and the St. Paul College of Law, now the Mitchell College of Law. After obtaining a law degree in 1931, he practiced law in Minnesota for over 20 years.
In 1953, President Eisenhower appointed him as an assistant U.S. Attorney General for the Justice Department's Civil Division. Three years later, he was placed on the Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit. In 1969, President Nixon elevated him to the High Court to succeed retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren. The Senate overwhelmingly approved Chief Justice Burger on June 9, 1969, after a judiciary committee hearing that reportedly lasted but an hour and 40 minutes, something that is hard to imagine happening today.
As Chief Justice, Warren Burger was tough on criminal defendants, but he was neither a hard-line conservative nor an activist willing to reverse rulings of the Warren Court. After he retired in 1986, he spoke regularly at judicial conventions. He wrote a recent book, ``It Is So Ordered: A Constitution Unfolds,'' in which he narrated in detail 14 major Supreme Court cases.
From 1987 until 1991, the former Chief Justice headed the commission on the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, a job he pursued with great passion, energy, and intensity. While he believed the Constitution to be a living document, allowing for the evolution of national governmental institutions, he also believed in following the letter of the law in reaching decisions. He once told an interviewer, ``If you follow your conscience instead of the Constitution, you've got 1,000 constitutions, not one. A judge must decide cases quite often in a way that he doesn't like to decide them at all.''
Of course, Chief Justice Burger wasn't ignoring the role of one's conscience in interpreting the Constitution, for that is an important part of deciding cases. To him, the role of a jurist's conscience was to ensure that he followed the law as written, regardless of personal or political beliefs.
Warren Burger will stand in history as one of our great Supreme Court Chief Justices. He served during a time of swift social change in our Nation, and will long be remembered for the balance, moderation, and consistent thoughtfulness he brought to the Court and to the administration of justice in general.
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