President Lincoln's thoughts on Justice and the Duty of Government

[David Lockmiller]

A final reference to President Lincoln by Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens at pages 90-91:

Chief Justice Earl Warren play[ed] a significant role in foreign affairs. He traveled widely when the Court was not in session, made numerous speeches to foreign groups -- as many as eight in one day on a visit to Ireland -- and attended and helped to organize international judicial conferences advocating world peace through law. (emphasis added) His liberal opinions motivated "Impeach Earl Warren" campaigns by hostile stateside critics, but Solicitor General J. Lee Rankin's travels with Warren led him to remark that people living beyond the borders of the United States regarded Warren as "the greatest humanitarian in the Western Hemisphere since Abraham Lincoln." In 1963, President John Kennedy asked him to head the American delegation at the coronation of Pope Paul VI and made Air Force One available to enable him to attend a world peace conference during the same trip. President Johnson also provided him with the use of Air Force On for several goodwill missions abroad. His choice of Warren to head the commission to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy reflected Johnson's judgment that the chief was the most trustworthy man available in the entire country.