Influence Without Impeachment: How the Impeach Earl Warren Movement Began, Faltered, But Avoided Irrelevance

Introduction

As visitors filed into the Indianapolis Speedway on Memorial Day in 1965, they were greeted by a massive billboard declaring, “Save Our Republic! Impeach Earl Warren.”¹ Earlier that year, just outside the city of Selma, Alabama, observers and participants in the historic civil rights march that took place there were confronted by a similar billboard calling for the impeachment of the Chief Justice of the United States. Both billboards displayed the name of the group responsible for their conspicuous placement: the John Birch Society.² By 1966, there were hundreds of similar signs placed on streets, roads, and highways all across the nation. While not every billboard, sign, or pamphlet bore the name of the group, it was clear that the campaign to impeach Earl Warren was a project driven by the John Birch Society.³

Despite being one of the most prominent, well-funded campaigns ever to advocate for the impeachment of a Supreme Court justice, there has been little scholarship—legal or otherwise—examining the Impeach Earl Warren movement. Although Warren was never impeached, it is a mistake to treat the movement as nothing more than an interesting yet inconsequential chapter in the history of public criticisms of the Supreme Court. As this article argues, lots of people, including members of Congress and news reporters, misunderstood critical aspects of the Impeach Earl Warren movement, which led many to dismiss it.⁴ However, a clearer understanding of the movement helps better evaluate both its impact and its historical significance. This article examines three lesser known aspects of the Impeach Earl Warren movement. First, although the John Birch Society can most readily be identified with anti-Communism, the group’s campaign to impeach Chief Justice Warren originates in the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Second, the John Birch Society’s leadership and tactics significantly impeded widespread acceptance of the Impeach Earl Warren movement into the mainstream conservative movement, despite a shared opposition to Brown, and may even have been counterproductive. Finally, what the John Birch Society sought to accomplish with its campaign to impeach Warren was more complicated and nuanced than simply removing the Chief Justice from the Court.

I

A. Robert Welch and the John Birch Society

The John Birch Society persists as an organization with a stated mission to support the Constitution and bring about “less government, more responsibility, and—with God’s help—a better world.”⁵ The group is headquartered in Appleton, Wisconsin, hometown of former Senator and anti-Communist zealot Joe McCarthy. It offers a variety of membership packages that connect members to local chapters through field coordinators. However, the group remains secretive about how many local chapters exist and refuses to divulge membership size of the organization. Despite its persistence as an organization, it is hardly controversial to say that the group’s most recognizable characteristic is its connection to the anti-Communist movement of the 1960s, which flourished around the time the group was founded by Robert Welch.

On December 1, 1899, Robert Welch was born on a farm in Chowan County, North Carolina. After graduating from the University of North Carolina, Welch attended the U.S. Naval Academy and Harvard Law School, but he graduated from neither. While it is clear that Welch’s foray into the legal field did not end with a degree, it is less certain whether Welch’s departure from Harvard Law School without graduating was a choice of his own or the result of poor performance. According to the current John Birch Society website, Welch left HLS because “he had had enough of the school and Marxist Professor (and later Supreme Court Justice) Felix Frankfurter.”⁶ Indeed, Welch later told his biographer that when he took Frankfurter’s labor law class he found the professor was overly sympathetic toward labor and progressive tendencies.⁷

However, there are reasons to doubt that Welch left HLS on his own volition. First, the only evidence that Welch left Harvard because of his frustration with Frankfurter’s ideology comes from the John Birch Society...