Editing Earl Warren (section)

===Appointment===
After the 1952 election, President-elect Eisenhower promised that he would appoint Warren to the next vacancy on the [[Supreme Court of the United States]]. Warren turned down the position of [[United States Secretary of the Interior|Secretary of the Interior]] in the new administration, but in August 1953 he agreed to serve as the [[Solicitor General of the United States|Solicitor General]].{{Sfn|Cray|1997|pp=246–249}} In September 1953, before Warren's nomination as solicitor general was announced, Chief Justice [[Fred M. Vinson]] died.{{sfn|Abraham|1992|p=255}} To fill the critical position of chief justice, Eisenhower first offered the position of chief justice to [[Thomas E. Dewey]], but Dewey declined the offer. He then considered either elevating a sitting Supreme Court justice or appointing another individual with judicial experience but ultimately chose to honor his promise to appoint Warren to the first Supreme Court vacancy.{{Sfn|Cray|1997|pp=250–253}} Explaining Warren's qualifications for the Court, Eisenhower wrote to his brother, "Warren has had seventeen years of practice in public law, during which his record was one of remarkable accomplishment and success.... He has been very definitely a liberal-conservative; he represents the kind of political, economic, and social thinking that I believe we need on the Supreme Court."{{Sfn|Cray|1997|pp=261–262}}

Warren received a [[recess appointment]] in October 1953. In the winter of 1953–1954, the [[Senate Judiciary Committee]] reported him favorably by a 12–3 majority, with three southerners in [[James Eastland]], [[Olin D. Johnston]] and [[Harley M. Kilgore]] reporting negatively.<ref>{{cite news|title=Vote Is 12 to 3: Senate Unit Backs Warren Nomination|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]|location=[[Washington, D.C.|Washington, District of Columbia]]|date=February 25, 1954|page=1}}</ref> The Senate would then confirm Warren's appointment by acclamation in March 1954;{{Sfn|Cray|1997|pp=289–290}} unlike the future appointments of [[John Marshall Harlan II]] and [[Potter Stewart]] (who ironically would prove the most conservative members of the Warren Court) southern senators made no effort to block Warren.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Kahn|first=Michael A.|date=1992|title=Shattering the Myth about President Eisenhower's Supreme Court Appointments |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27550903 |journal=Presidential Studies Quarterly|volume=22|issue=1|pages=47–56|jstor=27550903 }}</ref> As of 2024, Warren is the most recent chief justice to have held statewide elected office at any point in his career and the most recent serving politician to be appointed Chief Justice. Warren was also the first [[Nordic and Scandinavian Americans|Scandinavian American]] to be appointed to the Supreme Court.<ref name="Collective">Schmidhauser, John Richard; ‘The Justices of the Supreme Court: A Collective Portrait’; ''[[Midwest Journal of Political Science]]''; vol. 3, no. 1 (February 1959), pp. 1-57</ref>