Raoul Berger

Raoul Berger (January 4, 1901 – September 23, 2000) was an American legal scholar at the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Law School. While at Harvard, he was the Charles Warren Senior Fellow in American Legal History. He is known for his role in the development of originalism.

Early life and education He emigrated to the United States with his family from Ukraine in 1904. He first pursued studies as a concert violinist at the Institute of Musical Art in New York that culminated in his joining the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra as its 2nd Concert Master (1928-1932) and the 1st violinist of the Cincinnati String Quartet (1929-1932). After earning his A.B. from the University of Cincinnati in 1932, he abandoned his professional music career to study law at the Northwestern University School of Law, from which he graduated at age 35. He practiced law in Chicago before enrolling at Harvard Law School, where he earned his Master of Laws degree (LL.M.) in 1938.

In 1977, Berger unleashed a firestorm of controversy within the legal academy with his next book, Government by Judiciary. In it, Berger claimed that the Warren Court's expansive interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment alternately distorted and ignored the intentions of the framers of that amendment as disclosed by the historical record. Berger presented arguments that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment did not intend it to forbid segregated schooling. Berger further posited that the Warren Court expanded the authority of the judiciary without constitutional warrant. Berger died in 2000 at the age of 99.