Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court (1969–86). In 1955 he was appointed judge in the Court of Appeal in the District of Columbia. A conservative republican, he was appointed by President Nixon as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in May 1969, to succeed Chief Justice Warren. He did not, however, seek to reverse all the liberal judgements of his predecessor, especially when civil rights were concerned. In 1971 the Court supported a policy of busing to lessen racial segregation in schools, but in 1974 its judgement on Milliken v. Bradley accepted the reality of racial segregation by housing. In the 1978 Bakke case it supported “positive discrimination” in favour of disadvantaged candidates for university admission, i.e. Black or Hispanic students, even though it also ruled that in this particular case a rejected White candidate, Allan Bakke, be admitted. Burger also voted in favour of the right to have an abortion (Roe v. Wade; 1973). In 1974 Burger wrote a judgement for the case of United States v. Richard M. Nixon, in which he confirmed that the Supreme Court and not the President was the final arbiter of the US Constitution.