Biography

September 17, 1907 · St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

June 25, 1995 · Washington, District of Columbia, USA (congestive heart failure)

Warren Earl Burger

Chief Justice of U.S. Supreme Court (1969-1986).

Was mentioned in an Allan Sherman song entitled "Oh Boy" as "Chief Justice Warren".

"I assume that no one will take issue with me when I say that these North European countries are as enlightened as the United States in the value they place on the individual and on human dignity. [Those countries] do not consider it necessary to use a device like our Fifth Amendment, under which an accused person may not be required to testify. They go swiftly, efficiently and directly to the question of whether the accused is guilty. No nation on earth goes to such lengths or takes such pains to provide safeguards as we do, once an accused person is called before the bar of justice and until his case is completed." Speech at Ripon College, 1967.

Our system is too costly, too painful, too destructive, too inefficient for a truly civilized people. To rely on the adversary process as the principal means of resolving conflicting claims is a mistake that must be corrected.

If I were writing the Bill of Rights now, there wouldn't be any such thing as the Second Amendment, which says "...that a well regulated militia being necessary for the defense of the state, the people's rights to bear arms." This 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. Now let's look at those words, there are only three lines to that amendment - "a well regulated militia." If the militia, which was going to be the state army, was going to be regulated, why shouldn't 16 and 17 and 18, or any other age persons be regulated in the use of arms, the way an automobile is regulated.