Talk:Warren E. Burger

Burger's less positive side
Should there be any mention in the article of the very critical picture of Burger provided in The Brethren by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong in 1979? The book was a best-seller, and its depiction of Burger as a domineering, power-hungry Chief with little to no control of the court's consensus surely influenced many Americans' ideas about his work (and, if at all accurate, gives an impression of how his Court functioned in reaction to him). I don't want to post some hatchet job on Burger, but I think the article as it stands is a little too obsequious (just a little) -- for example, it notes his staunch support for checks and balances in his ruling against Nixon, while Woodward and Armstrong's information depicts Burger as very deferential to the powers of the executive branch, their book claiming that Burger would have much preferred a narrow ruling that preserved executive privilege in many scenarios but that he was pulled to the position of the other justices at the last minute to emphasize the Court's unanimous rebuke of Nixon's claim. Any thoughts on whether or not some carefully attributed remarks would be appropriate? If so, does someone have an equally well-known (or else well-respected) source that might defend against W&A's picture of Burger, in order to help assert NPOV? Jwrosenzweig 23:22, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm going to reiterate this claim once more...if no one responds in the next few weeks, I think I'll try and even things out. I'm worried I'll be too hard on him, but the article as it stands is entirely too glowing and admiring of a man who (to my knowledge) was not a very capable judge. Jwrosenzweig 01:55, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I read The Brethren, and it sounds like he was worthless.Cameron Nedland 23:08, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

The Brethren does not cite most of its sources (which were largely anonymous), even if it is generally regarded as credible. However, some of William Brennan's then-confidential memos are now being published, and they appear to confirm at least some elements of that book's portrayal of Burger. Among other things, the memos claim that the Nixon tapes decision was largely written by Potter Stewart, and that Burger only agreed to replace large parts of his opinion with Stewart's after it became clear that no other justice was going to join him. http://www.slate.com/id/2156940/entry/2156942/

Jschonholtz 20:55, 10 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay, I generally agree with this line of thinking. I don't want the article just to be goody-two-shoes.  I don't want the article just to be a puff piece.  And I see we have included some of The Brethren material in our article.  Maybe we could also include one sentence on the limitations of this book.  And I'm not sure we have yet worked in the Brennan memos.


 * Now, the conventional wisdom is that the Burger Court was the counter-revolution which wasn't. But that may not always be the case.  For example, I've read that the Burger Court watered down Baker v. Carr (this was the 1962 decision that state legislative districts needed to be the same population).  FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 15:30, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
 * The tweaks to the equal-population requirement established in Baker, while significant in the context of redistricting litigation, would actually have a pretty minor place in any analysis of Burger's or the Burger Court's jurisprudence. There was a little bit more leeway given to legislatures to deviate from precise mathematical equality (especially in the context of state legislatures as opposed to Congressional seats), but the basic requirement that districts have at least approximately the same number of residents (rather than simply being based on historical or geographical factors such as county lines) was repeatedly reaffirmed under Burger and is still in effect today. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:38, 9 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I read that the Burger Court changed Baker v. Carr and allowed state legislative districts to be 20% up or down, which may not sound like much, but . . ..
 * There was a human element in which one of the justices or former justices, maybe Earl Warren himself (although that doesn't sound quite right because he didn't live that much longer after retiring) or maybe Bill Brennan, was really disappointed with this aspect of the Burger Court.
 * And Reynolds v. Sims (1964) was another big case of the Warren Court era which involved state legislative seats. (I'm not a lawyer, but I am a citizen.  And one thing that makes this all so confusing is that the first guy's name is Earl Warren whereas the second guy's name is Warren Burger!)  FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 20:17, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, the coincidence of "Warren" in both names is interesting. It has also caused confusion sometimes. A couple of years ago I was doing some research in a manuscript collection of a lower-court judge who had some official and social correspondence with members of the Supreme Court, and there was a letter marked "sent to Warren," and I had to point out to the librarian that it belonged in the "Correspondence with Chief Justice Burger" file rather than the "Correspondence with Chief Justice Warren" file.
 * Of course, what might really have been interesting would have been if Justice Burger had served with Justice Frankfurter. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:15, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Imagine the jokes on The Simpsons then! ;)  FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 16:04, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I was mistaken about something above. Former Chief Justice Earl Warren did live about five years after retiring, so it may have well been him who was disappointed with the Burger Court's modification of Baker v. Carr.  One might think that Warren would view Brown v. Board of Education as the most important decision of the Court during his tenure.  But no, I've read that Earl Warren considered Baker to be his most important decision.  FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 18:47, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Homer thinks he's delicious?
Homer Simpson: "Chief Justice of The Supreme Court. What great men he would join: John Marshall. Charles Evans Hughes. Warren Burger. Mmmmm, Burger" Perhaps this should be mentioned in the article. 153.104.16.114 19:07, 13 November 2005 (UTC) done with elaboration.
 * Yeah....I'm thinking no. Kade 19:25, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Link to Ripon College speech?
I've searched all over the internet for this speech and I can't find it. What I did find was 25 copy-paste jobs of the Wikipedia article. I'd like to see something to corroborate this, the credibility of the article is at stake and its sources are sparse. Kade 19:26, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Confusing sentence
"...he vigorously dissented from the Court's holding in the case of Solem v. Helm that a sentence of life imprisonment for issuing a fraudulent check in the amount of $100 constituted cruel and unusual punishment."
 * If you would learn to read, it won't be so confusing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.175.206.237 (talk) 00:30, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Last Will and Testament of Warren Burger
We wish to advise everyone that we (the Living Trust Network) have a copy of Warren Burger's Last Will and Testament posted on our website, which we believe is of interest to anyone seeking information about life of Warren Burger. We have also discussed our desire to post a link to Warren Berger's Last Will and Testament with Wikipedia administrators [See User talk:Livingtrust], either under "references" or "external links." Last Will and Testament of Warren Burger. Wikipedia does not object to the link but has requested that we not put the link up ourselves since we are a commercial website. Instead, it has requested that we make it known that the Last Will and Testament is available, and anyone who wishes to add the link to the "reference" section or the "external links" section may do so. So, we solicite your help in adding the link set forth above. Thanks. Livingtrust 01:30, 8 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Quite frankly, I do not understand the relevance of including Burger's will in the article. What purpose does it serve? If we had a will for every individual with an article, would we include it? Unless there is something particularly notable or unusual about his will, then why include? As for including a link to the will site, I think that is a separate matter. Again, this should not be an exercise in advertising.--RexRex84 05:31, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Burger & Blackmun
I modified this sentence by adding the italicized language.


 * was a longtime friend, although they grew apart during their mutual service on the Court.

I added my source -- the Greenhouse book -- at the end of the page. I tried to express this idea generally; Greenhouse does so in more detail. ---Axios023 04:19, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

WikiMinnesota and WikiLaw
I added these two because I thought they were glaring omissions. I can understand why WikiVirginia is involved, since he was the Chancellor at William & Mary, but to not include these two seems wrong. Adanielch (talk) 00:00, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Bot-created subpage
A temporary subpage at User:Polbot/fjc/Warren Earl Burger was automatically created by a perl script, based on this article at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges. The subpage should either be merged into this article, or moved and disambiguated. Polbot (talk) 16:53, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

"Burger did not allow an opinion to be assigned [...] the case"
Which case is the above referring to? TGGP (talk) 04:37, 24 March 2010 (UTC)


 * LOL. Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha. Seems like the article got somewhat gutted in the last month or so. I found this in an historical version from February 12, 2010. Fat&amp;Happy (talk) 05:41, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Who is Symington ???
In the section "Retirement, death and legacy", there's this sentence: "In 1987, Princeton University's American Whig-Cliosophic Society awarded Symington the James Madison Award for Distinguished Public Service." Who is Symington? Should that be Burger instead? And The link for reference 18 doesn't seem to work. David M. Hennessey (talk) 12:12, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
 * That's a good catch. Per, Burger did win the award in 1987. Stuart Symington won it in an earlier year. I assume that someone went through the articles of all the winners noting their awards, and forgot to change the name. I'll fix this now. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:09, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Good to have a variety of sources
I think it's good to have both books and newspapers, as well as a variety of other sources. As one example, it's possible a book could get a year wrong since the author is concerned with big sweeps of history, whereas with a photocopy of a newspaper article, this is much less likely.

Warren Officially Retires As Burger Takes Oath,St. Petersburg [Florida] Independent, Evening Independent, Washington (AP), Monday, June 23, 1969, page 12-A: “Warren Earl Burger was sworn in at 10:42 a.m. today to be the 15th chief justice of the United States. . .  .  ”


 * Plus, I just think it's kind of interesting to have a contemporaneous newspaper article for the date the man first took office. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 14:52, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Warren Burger nominated May 1969, plus he held views outside judicial mainstream
Nixon’s New Chief Justice, Editorial, Washington Afro-American  and The Washington Tribune, May 27, 1969, page 4:  “. . .  His lower court arguments usually left him in a minority position on controversial criminal cases and the same probably will be true when he becomes chief justice, if he holds to some of his old views. One of Mr. Burger’s views, that illegally obtained evidence should be used against defendants but that the policeman who invaded a person’s privacy to get it, should himself be punished,. . ”


 * Would probably improve article if we could get additional sources and expand on this topic. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 02:12, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

View of the 2nd Amendment and of the NRA's interpretation of the 2nd Amendment
On the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, December 16, 1991:

“To ‘keep and bear arms’ for hunting today is essentially a recreational activity and not an imperative of survival, as it was 200 years ago; ‘Saturday night specials’ and machine guns are not recreational weapons and surely are as much in need of regulation as motor vehicles.” He also said that the dogmatic interpretation of the 2nd Amendment by the modern NRA “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 that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

I thought this was relevant, important, and interesting given his reputation as a strict constructionist — Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.52.208.85 (talk) 14:15, 8 July 2015 (UTC)


 * It's more interesting that the 18th Century record disproves his opinion. 69.201.9.37 (talk) 03:29, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Confusing phrasing
"Although Burger was a conservative,[1] the U.S. Supreme Court delivered numerous conservative decisions"

When I'm reading this sentence, the "although" sets up the expectation that the U.S. supreme court delivered liberal decisions even though Burger was conservative. I don't know enough about Burger to make an appropriate edit, but this should be rewritten for clarity, depending on whether Berger, the Supreme Court decisions, or both were conservative. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DSchemitsch (talk • contribs) 17:24, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Chancellor of The College of William and Mary
Hello all! As a student at W&M, I took an interest in its deep history and connection to influential figures. The position of Chancellor, held by Burger from 1986 to 1993, is mostly honorary and ceremonial but considering the others who have held the title, it is also very prestigious. I plan to add this as the second title/position mentioned under his portrait but wanted to post in talk as there is no clear rule for this specific topic. For example, on Sandra Day O'Connor's page, the title is listed. But on Henry Kissinger's pages, the title is not even mentioned in the text.

To be sure, the position has meant more to some than to others. But considering Burger had an outsized impact on Williamsburg, and the fact that his son donated his records and papers to the College, it is fair to assume that the position was meaningful to Burger and worth prominent mention. Please respond if you have a unified stylistic suggestion for the Chancellorship or if you disagree with my assessment. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mcelya (talk • contribs) 05:43, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

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Mistake in intro
Nevermind. My mistake