Gideon v. Wainwright - The Warren Court

Earl Warren, the former governor of California, served as chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1953 to 1969. Warren's tenure as chief justice is widely viewed as a period of extraordinary judicial activism, which resulted in landmark Supreme Court cases.

One of the most important cases Warren ever presided over was also one of the first cases he presided over as chief justice. The case was Brown v. Board of Education, which overturned segregated public schools as "inherently unequal" and in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Warren Court was also responsible for two landmark decisions that protected the rights of the accused in Gideon v. Wainwright and Miranda v. Arizona. In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Court threw out a Connecticut law that banned the circulation of birth control information. That ruling would prove critical for the post-Warren Court ruling of Roe v. Wade, which upheld a woman's right to have an abortion.