There is a book out that claims the Burger Court was a conservative court and lead the way to the current conservative judges. Wrong. Some of their decisions could have been conservative, however, most of their social decisions were more reformist than not.
If the Burger court lead to the conservative court of today, it was because for 18 years Warren Burger scared the living guts out of the right-wing. It was definitely a reformist court whereby CIVIL RIGHTS MATTERED.
Earl Warren’s successor, (click here) Warren Burger, a native of Minnesota, had been a judge of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for more than a decade. He became Chief Justice in 1969.
One of the most famous of the Court’s rulings involving the conflict between religious freedom and state public schools came under Chief Justice Burger in 1972. It resulted in a victory for three Amish families in rural Wisconsin who were testing the guarantee of religious freedom. They had refused to send their children to public school beyond the eighth grade, asserting that modern secondary education was contrary to the Amish religion and a threat to their children’s salvation. "The Amish . . . have convincingly demonstrated the sincerity of their religious beliefs," said the Court, and the children were free, after completing elementary school, to follow the centuries-old tradition of learning at home.
When the Internal Revenue Service declared in 1970 that private schools discriminating against blacks could no longer claim tax-exempt status, the action went largely unnoticed by the public. In 1983, it became prime-time news when two religious schools having admission policies based on race sought to regain tax-favored status and the case reached the Supreme Court.
Counsel for Bob Jones University and Goldsboro Christian School argued that their policies were based on sincerely held religious beliefs. But the Court ruled that the First Amendment did not prevent denial of tax-favored status. Eliminating racial discrimination in education substantially outweighed any burden placed on the free exercise of religion, according to the eight-to-one majority....
