A Warren Court of Our Own

Book excerpt: "While the expansion of individual rights by the United States Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren has been the subject of extensive academic commentary, very little has been written about the Exum Court in North Carolina. The dearth of scholarship on this subject is unfortunate because Jim Exum's tenure as chief justice-like Warren's-constituted an unprecedented era of judicial boldness. This book is based primarily on a detailed review of the Exum Court's body of cases and over 45 interviews with the surviving justices from that era of the court, law clerks, practitioners, and members of North Carolina's legal academy. In addition, it draws upon contemporaneous interviews of the justices conducted between 1986 and 1995 as well as on the few existing books and articles about the members of the Exum Court and North Carolina's transformation into a two-party state in judicial elections. This book explores in depth the pathbreaking nature of the Exum Court's jurisprudence and the justices themselves in the hope of providing a better understanding of this unique and important period in the history of North Carolina's highest court and how it fundamentally changed North Carolina law"--