COLUMN ONE : Vanishing Voice of Liberalism : The Supreme Court’s conservative pace is expected to quicken with Thurgood Marshall’s retirement. Winners are likely to be prosecutors and police.

When California Gov. Earl Warren was appointed chief justice of the United States in 1953, a young Phoenix lawyer named William H. Rehnquist dashed off a letter to a veteran justice, Robert H. Jackson, expressing his dismay.

“Almost everyone here was quite disappointed by the nomination,” Rehnquist complained of the man who was to lead a liberal Supreme Court that greatly expanded the rights of blacks and criminal defendants. “What the court really needs is a chief justice . . . (who has) the ability to think and write about the law.”

Now, almost 40 years later, Chief Justice Rehnquist is in charge of a solidly conservative majority that has begun to unravel much of the Warren legacy. The shift is expected to move even more quickly now that the last Warren Court liberal, Justice Thurgood Marshall, has stepped down.

The impact will be unmistakable. Where the Warren Court saw its mission as protecting the rights of individuals--the poor, blacks, criminal defendants and political dissidents--the Rehnquist Court has seen its duty as upholding the will of the majority.

With the new conservative bloc, the winners are likely to be prosecutors and the police, and the losers will be anyone who clashes with governmental authority.

With a solid core of six conservatives, the Rehnquist Court also has shown a new willingness to sweep aside precedents.

Among the likely targets for change in coming sessions:

--The Roe vs. Wade ruling, which ensured pregnant women the right to abortion. When the Supreme Court reconvenes in October, only two supporters of the Roe decision will take the bench: Justices Harry A. Blackmun, 82, and John Paul Stevens, 71.

New abortion laws in Utah and Louisiana would make it a crime to end a pregnancy in nearly all instances. Once they have been challenged in the lower courts, the Supreme Court will have to decide--probably within two years--whether to overturn the Roe ruling.

--The longstanding principle of “separation of church and state.” Rehnquist has long contended that the Constitution allows the government to aid and endorse religion. In the fall, the justices will consider a Rhode Island case involving a graduation ceremony prayer, with an eye to redrawing the line between government and religion.

--Affirmative action in the workplace. In 1979, the court, in an opinion by Justice William J. Brennan Jr., ruled that employers may take race or sex into account in hiring or promoting workers.

Rehnquist dissented strongly and has adhered to the view that the law merely demands that employers not discriminate. Although no “affirmative action” cases are pending, the Rehnquist majority may seek out a chance to outlaw racial or gender preferences.

--Employees’ rights to vindicate their civil rights in court. The justices strongly hinted this term they may be willing to keep job discrimination cases out of the federal courts. For employers fearful of the high cost of litigation, this could be welcome news. For employees, it could mean the loss of a basic right.

In May, the justices said that workers who are required to sign an arbitration agreement as a condition of getting a job may be denied the right to file a job discrimination lawsuit. Instead, they must go to an industry arbitration panel. The 7-2 ruling appears to invite businesses to adopt arbitration clauses more widely.

Two years ago, the Rehnquist-led Supreme Court showed its willingness to overturn earlier rulings on civil rights issues. And in the term that ended last week, it overturned several of the Warren Court rulings that had broadened the rights of defendants and blacks.

In a half-dozen decisions in recent weeks, the court ruled that police may conduct mass searches of passengers on buses, that officers may search locked luggage in a car, that a coerced confession can be “harmless” and that prison inmates whose state appeals were bungled by their lawyers do not have a constitutional right to appeal in a federal court.

It also took a giant step toward ending court-ordered desegregation of the schools and a possible first move away from protecting the right to abortion, at least among poor women using federally funded clinics.

On Thursday, the court said that a mandatory life prison term for possessing a large quantity of cocaine is not “cruel and unusual punishment.”

The retirement of Marshall, a towering figure in the civil rights struggle and the last of the Warren Court liberals, is expected only to accelerate the pace. If Bush appoints another conservative, as expected, the Rehnquist majority will be a more-commanding 7 to 2, rather than the slimmer 6-3 or 5-4 margins on which it has issued its decisions before.

In his “final dissent” at his press conference Friday, Marshall predicted “an even broader and more far-reaching assault . . . on established constitutional liberties.”

To be sure, the conservative trend should be no surprise. It has now been nearly a quarter-century since the last Democratic appointee went to the high court--the longest one-party domination in the 20th Century.

Only in the past year or two, however, has the conservative influence become absolute. Although the court has had a conservative cast for a decade--especially on crime cases--the remaining liberal bloc led by Brennan could occasionally pull a surprise.

This term, however, there were no liberal surprises. “Since the early ‘70s, there has been talk of a counterrevolution” at the Supreme Court, says Stanford University law professor Gerald Gunther. “Now, there is no question: The counterrevolution is here.”

The term that ended last week was notable not just for a series of conservative rulings in crime cases, but for the court’s willingness to sweep aside settled precedents.

“They are now treating Warren Court precedents as cavalierly as the Warren Court used to treat precedents that it disfavored,” says Bruce Fein, a conservative legal expert and former Ronald Reagan Administration attorney.

New Justice David H. Souter, President Bush’s first appointee, has proven to be a reliable ally for Rehnquist, especially in the criminal cases. In the 110 cases decided this term, Souter voted with the chief justice 86% of the time, according to a Times computer analysis of high court decisions. He trailed only Antonin Scalia (who scored 89%) and Anthony M. Kennedy (at 88%) in his agreement with Rehnquist.

Souter was even more reliable in criminal cases, voting with Rehnquist in 92% of them--the closest alignment of any pair of justices. By contrast, Marshall and Stevens voted with the chief justice in only 31% of the criminal cases.

Until Brennan’s retirement last year, the liberal bloc could win on occasion by attracting the vote of the usually conservative Justices Byron R. White or Sandra Day O’Connor.

But this year, thanks to Souter, Rehnquist was able to muster a five-vote majority in cases on coerced confessions, abortion clinics, nude dancing and a life prison term for drug possession--even though both White and O’Connor frequently shifted to the liberal side.

If there is an exception to the conservative rule, it may involve matters of race. In several decisions this term, the high court, over dissents by Rehnquist and Scalia, said that potential jurors may not be excluded from trials--either criminal or civil--because of their race.

At times, too, the clear language of the law leads to what has been seen--sometimes erroneously--as a liberal decision. For example in March, the court ruled unanimously that companies may not use a “fetal protection policy” as a basis to exclude women from jobs where hazardous chemicals are used.

The case of Auto Workers vs. Johnson Controls prompted a national debate about workplace hazards for pregnant women. As a legal matter, however, the issue was hardly in doubt. Federal laws in 1964 and 1978 said that employers may not use sex or pregnancy as a basis for denying jobs to women. Therefore, a “fetal protection” policy that excludes women simply because they could become pregnant is illegal, the justices said.

But when the constitutional rights of crime defendants are at issue, the Rehnquist Court is predictable. “If you are a criminal lawyer or a criminal defendant, watch out. This court is bad news from start to finish,” says Alan Morrison of the Public Citizen Litigation Project.

Perhaps the most far-reaching ruling came in the case of Florida vs. Bostick, in which the justices ruled that police may conduct mass searches of passengers on buses and trains so long as they obtain consent before examining a traveler’s belongings.

“This is dramatic and disturbing,” says USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky. “In the Warren Court, individualized suspicion was the core of the Fourth Amendment.”

Then, the court had insisted that police have some reason to suspect wrongdoing before they could stop someone and attempt a search. In the Bostick case, the justices suggested that such mass searches of presumably innocent people are not unconstitutional unless it can be shown that force or intimidation was used.

Even conservatives such as Fein find this troubling.

“This says the police can conduct random sweeps. It is a totally unchecked police authority,” he said. “It means the police could go into a concert hall, for example, and say, ‘Help us make this a drug-free concert. We want to search all of you.’ ”

So far, the Rehnquist Court has not directly challenged the Warren Court’s two most sweeping criminal rulings.

In 1961, the court, on a 5-4 vote, applied the so-called “exclusionary rule” to states. Thereafter, a criminal conviction could be reversed whenever a judge concluded that evidence had been illegally obtained.

Law enforcement officials still chafe at the rule, but prosecutors have not asked the Supreme Court to overturn it.

Nor has the Miranda rule been squarely challenged. That 5-4 decision in 1966 said that a suspect’s confession to a crime could not be used in court if police failed to warn him of his right to remain silent and his right to a lawyer.

Rehnquist has repeatedly made clear he does not accept the Miranda doctrine. Two years ago during an oral argument, a defense attorney began a sentence by saying, “Miranda requires that . . . “

The chief justice cut him off in midsentence. “All of Miranda,” he snapped, “is dicta”--the legal term for verbiage in a court ruling that does not have the force of law. In his opinions, Rehnquist says the Constitution only requires that a confession be voluntary, not that a suspect has been warned to be silent.

But other court conservatives, including White and O’Connor, say they support the Miranda doctrine, so it is not clear whether the chief justice has the votes to reverse it.

Nonetheless, the court in recent weeks has made it clear that precedents alone will not stand in its way. Its view of criminal appeals was well illustrated in a decision handed down Monday.

In 1986, Roger K. Coleman sat on Virginia’s Death Row, having been convicted of the murder of his sister-in-law, a charge he denied. His court-appointed lawyer filed an appeal on his behalf 33 days after a final judgment was entered in his case.

However, Virginia law sets a 30-day limit for filing appeals. The question for the Supreme Court was whether a federal judge can hear Coleman’s claim that his constitutional rights were violated during his trial.

“This is a case about federalism,” began O’Connor in denying Coleman’s right to appeal. “It concerns the respect that federal courts owe the states and the state’s procedural rules.”

In 1963, the Warren Court had ruled that the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867 gives state inmates who claim their constitutional rights were violated a right to appeal their convictions in a federal court. A procedural mistake may not be used to bar such a claim, wrote Brennan in the case of Fay vs. Noia.

On Monday, O’Connor’s opinion overruled that decision. If a lawyer bungles and fails to file a state appeal on time, a federal court has no authority to hear the appeal, she said. She was joined by Rehnquist, White, Scalia, Kennedy and Souter.

Where the Warren Court saw its duty as vindicating the individual rights protected by the Constitution, the Rehnquist majority saw its duty as showing “respect” for the procedural rules set in state courts.

A poignant scene Thursday morning illustrated the final passing of the Warren Court.

Moments before the black-robed justices took the bench, retired Justice Brennan, an architect of many of the Warren era’s most sweeping rulings, walked slowly and unsteadily into the courtroom and took a seat. Although 85 years old and weak, Brennan looked rejuvenated for a minute. He smiled broadly, waved to friends and shook hands with court employees who quietly filed by.

But five minutes later, the smile was gone. He glared stone-faced as first Scalia and then Rehnquist read opinions sharply restricting the rights of criminal defendants. Through it all, Marshall sat grimly and silently at the chief justice’s side.

After leaving the bench, the 82-year-old Marshall called Brennan first with the news. He, too, had served his last day on the Supreme Court.

Times researcher Keating Holland contributed to this story.