沃伦领导的另一个重要特征就是他对于普世道德准则的重视，而不是局限于对法律的狭隘解释。知名法学家马克·图施奈形容沃伦在重大案件中经常不按“常规的推理形式（conventional reasoning patterns）”进行判案，例如在布朗訴托皮卡教育局案（1954年）、雷诺兹诉西姆斯案（英语：Reynolds v. Sims）（1964年）、米兰达诉亚利桑那州案（1966年）中，他都推翻了先前最高法院所作出的判例。图施奈教授认为沃伦的判案原则是“哲学的、政治的、直觉的，而不是传统技术层面上的合法性（philosophical, political, and intuitive, not legal in the conventional technical sense）”。[22]
^Sunstein, CassBreyer's Judicial PragmatismUniversity of Chicago Law School. November, 2005. pg. 3-4. ("To many people, the idea of judicial deference to the elected branches lost much of its theoretical appeal in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Supreme Court, under the leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren, was invalidating school segregation (Brown v. Bd. of Educ.), protecting freedom of speech (Brandenburg v. Ohio) striking down poll taxes (Harper v. Bd. of Elections), requiring a rule of one person, one vote (Reynolds v. Sims), and protecting accused criminals against police abuse (Miranda v. Arizona)."
^Pederson, William D. Earl Warren. www.mtsu.edu. [2019-09-15]. （原始内容存档于2019-07-06） （英语）.
^Sunstein at 4 ("Is it possible to defend the Warren Court against the charge that its decisions were fatally undemocratic? The most elaborate effort came from John Hart Ely, the Warren Court's most celebrated expositor and defender, who famously argued for what he called a "representation-reinforcing" approach to judicial review. Like Thayer, Ely emphasized the central importance for democratic self-rule. But Ely famously insisted that if self-rule is really our lodestar, then unqualified judicial deference to legislatures is utterly senseless. Some rights, Ely argued, are indispensable to self-rule, and the Court legitimately protects those rights not in spite of democracy but in its name. The right to vote and the right to speak are the central examples. Courts promote democracy when they protect those rights.")
^Sunstein at 4 ("Ely went much further. He argued that some groups are at a systematic disadvantage in the democratic process, and that when courts protect 'discrete and insular minorities,' they are reinforcing democracy too.")
