When President Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1953, few Americans imagined that this well-known Republican would become the remarkable leader of a Court now recognized as the greatest liberal Court of this century, and that under his guidance the work of many brilliant justices would be especially renowned.The distinguished legal historian Morton J. Horwitz here considers the landmark cases that transformed American law in the postwar years. Brown v. Board of Education shattered more than a haft century of school segregation; New York Times v. Sullivan was a striking affirmation of freedom of the press; and Roe v. Wade (decided after Warren stepped down, but on the basis of rulings he established) used the citizen's right to privacy as a basis for affirming a woman's fight to obtain a legal abortion.Horwitz's lively, graceful, and informed book is enhanced by short profiles of the liberal voices on the court: Hugo L.

Black, William O. Douglas, Thurgood Marshall, William J. Brennan, Jr. (who, Horwitz argues, was perhaps the greatest justice in Supreme Court history), and, of course, the Chief Justice himself.