U.S. Supreme Courtroom Justice Elena Kagan will go to the Normal Dynamics-NASSCO shipyard in San Diego on Saturday to take part within the christening of a Navy gas ship that bears the identify of former California governor and Supreme Courtroom Chief Justice Earl Warren.
The Navy is honoring Warren largely for his contributions to civil rights, which embody getting the courtroom to unanimously determine in 1954 that state-sanctioned racial segregation in public colleges was unconstitutional.
Kagan was chosen by the Navy to be the so-called sponsor of the USNS Earl Warren, which suggests she performs a key ceremonial function within the numerous levels of the vessel’s growth.
As sponsor, she’s going to perform the custom of smashing a bottle of bubbly towards the ship, a gesture that’s meant to deliver the vessel and its crew good luck.
The ceremony, which isn’t open to the general public, may also be attended by Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, an indication of how a lot the Navy values gas ships just like the Earl Warren.
The vessels, that are operated by the Navy Sealift Command, roam the world’s oceans offering Navy ships with gas and provides. The Earl Warren is the third ship within the new John Lewis-class fleet of oilers. The vessels are 746 ft lengthy and may carry 156,000 barrels of oil. NASSCO is contracted to construct not less than eight of the ships, all of that are named after civil rights and human rights figures.
The corporate has already constructed the primary two ships. The John Lewis is known as for the late congressman, a serious determine within the nascent civil rights motion within the Nineteen Sixties. NASSCO then constructed the Harvey Milk, which is known as after the slain civil rights chief from San Francisco who championed homosexual rights.
Now comes a vessel named after Warren, a Los Angeles native who earned his regulation diploma at UC Berkeley in 1914 and served within the Army throughout World Battle I. He later turned district legal professional of Alameda County, the place he turned well-known for combating crime, then rose to the place of legal professional basic of California.
In 1942, Warren was elected to the primary of three phrases because the state’s governor. That was adopted in 1953 by his appointment as chief justice of the Supreme Courtroom. The next yr, in Brown v. the Board of Training, he presided over the landmark ruling on racial segregation in colleges.
He’s additionally well-known for shielding First Modification rights and for serving to to sanctify the precept of educational freedom for faculty school.
Warren retired from the courtroom in 1969 and died in 1974.
This story initially appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.
©2023 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Go to sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content material Company, LLC.
© Copyright 2023 The San Diego Union-Tribune. All rights reserved. This materials will not be revealed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
