Earl Warren

California's only governor elected three times, Warren ran a popular, largely nonpartisan administration from 1943 to 1953: highway building funded by a petrol tax increase, expansion of the university system and a failed attempt at state health insurance. As attorney general he had pushed for the internment of Japanese Americans, which he later regretted. Eisenhower appointed him Chief Justice in 1953, where Brown v Board of Education and his court's civil liberties rulings made him a national figure of a very different kind.