John F. Kennedy Commissioned Apr 12, 1962 Sworn in Apr 16, 1962 Seat 7 Reason for leaving Retired . He was a commissioned officer in the United States Navy from 1941 to 1945, receiving a Bronze Star for his service. This aberration came out of the Latter Rain Movement under the "apostleship" of John Robert Stevens, a William Branham disciple whose church in Redondo Beach, California, operated for a number of years as the headquarters for the movement. Washington, He notably dissented in, The Culture of Encounter and the Global Agenda, Politicization of Religion in Global Perspective, Religion and the Crisis of Displaced Persons, Transatlantic Policy Network on Religion and Diplomacy, Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue, Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, The Religious Neutrality of Justice John Paul Stevens. There was a time, years ago in the Warren Court era, when liberal justices like Stevenss predecessor William O. Douglas saw themselves as on a mission to recreate American society along boldly egalitarian lines by discovering newly minted constitutional rights. The majority opinion later circulates among the justices, and on rare occasions a justice may then change his or her vote, and a majority can become a dissent. the American Bar Association, a significant gesture of confidence. Stevenss approach to the job changed noticeably when Blackmun retired in 1994 and Stevens became senior associate justice. Justice John Paul Stevens, who was nominated to the Supreme Court by Republican President Gerald Ford in 1975 in the wake of Watergate and stepped down almost 35 years later as a leader for the . retired. I just think it takes nine people to do that. He noted that Roberts had a bit of a honeymoon period during his first term. He is in such good physical shape that, in 2005, at age 85, he threw the first pitch at a Cubs-Reds game at Wrigley Field and got it right over the plate. At the same time, merely conserving the achievements of the past is less than what many liberals today ultimately hope for. David J. Barron 94, United States Court of Appeals First Circuit, and the Hon. On June 22, a week before the last term ended, I visited the Supreme Court for a conversation with Stevens. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com. 3, 1925-1930|Virginia Woolf, Poison Pen: The True Confessions Of Two Tabloid Reporters|David Lafontaine, The Revolutionary 7-Unit Low Fat Diet|Audrey Eyton Whether the court changed or Stevens changed or the political climate changed theres evidence of each the justices decision to step down this summer will almost certainly mean a more conservative Supreme Court, even with Barack Obama in the White House and Democrats controlling Congress. My immediate and strong reaction was that the public should have been informed of the dissent, Stevens has written. Stevenss uncle committed suicide, and his father was convicted in 1934 of embezzling $1.3 million. After greeting me cordially in his chambers, wearing a short-sleeved sport shirt and slacks, he motioned me toward a couch and relaxed in a nearby chair. Identifying potential Stevenses in their 40s or 50s may not be easy: Stevens after all, hadnt evolved into the justice he would become when he joined the court at age 55. Despite his political leanings, his father took the 12-year-old Stevens to the 1932 Democratic Convention in Chicago, where Stevens remembers not realizing Roosevelt had polio as he walked to the platform to deliver his acceptance speech. Justice Stevens never joined the cert. Harry Blackmun used to complain about how hard the job was, how it was a real burden, and he was a workaholic, Stevens told me. At the same time, the court had to decide whether to uphold or strike down the law governing the death penalty in Texas. Emphasizing the dangers of denying anyone within American jurisdiction a fair trial, Stevens once again cited Rutledges dissent in his own opinion in the Hamdan case in 2006, which struck down President Bushs military commissions because they were not specifically authorized by Congress. Stevens became the leader of the left on the court, says Robert Post, a professor at Yale Law School, because hes able to say, I remember, and Im faithful to what has happened in the past, but my fidelity is to all of American history. , Stevens looks to be in remarkable shape for an 87-year-old man and, as he stressed in his confirmation hearings, his family has a history of longevity. But commendable personal qualities do not always translate into judicial virtues, particularly when it comes to the objective and consistent application of established rules of law. Citizens United v. FEC - Wikipedia It was the University of Chicago, not Northwestern. There is a very different notion when youre thinking about killing an individual, as opposed to killing a soldier in the line of fire. Stevens said that, partly as a result of his World War II experience, he has tried on the court to narrow the category of offenders who are eligible for the death penalty and to ensure that it is imposed fairly and accurately. It also involved two aspects of an ongoing debate: first, the debate over gun violence and its causes; and second, the debate over "originalism" and whether the Court can sensibly interpret the . His career in private practice was punctuated by stints in government service, including as counsel to a special commission of the Illinois Supreme Court that led to the resignations of two State Supreme Court justices. - C.S. As a sign of how significantly the Republican Party has changed since 1975, President Ford, until the end of his life, embraced Stevenss jurisprudence even as a younger generation of Republicans was denouncing it. John Paul Stevens December 23, 2010 issue Reviewed: Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition by David Garland Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 417 pp., $35.00 I dont know about the two new justices Roberts and Alito but I kind of assume it may well be up to him. Abortion rights supporters may take solace in the fact that Stevens indicated that Kennedy seemed to view the regulation of so-called partial-birth abortions as consistent with Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld the central holding of Roe v. Wade. It seems to me that one of the overriding principles in running the country is the government ought to be neutral, Stevens told me. Its not everybody my age who is able to continue to do work that he likes to do, he said. In Citizens United, he referred to Tokyo Rose, the World War II propagandist. Id. Indeed . First, in an age when the conservative justices are determined to cut off access to the courts in cases from civil rights to terrorism, the next liberal justice would interpret the Constitution to provide access to the courts to enforce the rule of law and would understand that even the most powerful president is not a king. Second, the justice would interpret the Constitution in light of the entire history of the nation, and not just in light of the Constitutions drafting history. Third, the justice would interpret the Constitution to create conditions of equal liberty to participate in the life of the nation in areas ranging from abortion and sex equality to affirmative action and campaign finance reform. Very rare.. Another problem with such a flexible experience and justice approach is that it can conflict with rules the court has established for deciding various issues. He was a fellow Midwesterner, honest, self-effacing and kind, but with a strong independent streak and a . The answer to whether a law is constitutional, however, should not depend on what a particular judge has learned from his or her evolving experience. Heller sued the District of Columbia. But over time he became the Jedi Master of cobbling together majority opinions in favor of his liberal views, even as the court around him grew increasingly conservative. The decision has energized the grass-roots property rights movement. Rutledge objected to the idea that federal courts couldnt issue writs of habeas corpus because the Germans were held on Ellis Island rather than falling within the jurisdiction of a federal district court. Id be reading briefs by the pool, and one of them would say, Thats awful stuffy! He swims every day in the ocean, plays tennis at least three times a week and plays golf two or three times a week. where he met future president John F. Kennedy and befriended future justice John Paul Stevens. In an interview last week, he said that every one of the dozen justices appointed to the court since 1971, including himself, was more conservative than his or her predecessor. Stevens said that the federal ban was deeply flawed and that Kennedys rhetoric about the need to protect women from the emotional trauma of abortions was frustrating. . Justice John Paul Stevens struck an important blow against the modern death penalty 17 years ago in a Supreme Court decision barring capital punishment for intellectually disabled people. Only later, because of the reaction that followed Roe, did abortion become a central issue in national politics. One of the most militant movements attempting to establish the Kingdom of God on earth is the Manifested Sons of God. Later in his career, however, he changed his position on all of these issues. . Some legal scholars view Stevenss sense of history as a reason for his warm embrace by liberals. Stevens was a Republican nominated by a Republican, President Ford, chosen not for his ideology but for his legal mind and the reputation he had built investigating corruption on the Illinois Supreme Court. But such senses are usually based on value judgments derived from personal experiences and preferences, or what we sometimes call political ideology, rather than the rule of law. I dont know if Im entitled to the credit or Tonys entitled to the credit, because he wrote an exceptional opinion. In other cases, Stevens has written the majority opinion himself in an effort to shore up Kennedys vote. But I like the job, he said with a laugh. He also wrote Engaging Religion in U.S. Foreign Affairs, a chapter in the Companion to Religion and Politics in the United States (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016). When the chief justice is in the majority and Stevens is in the minority, Stevens decides who will write the principal dissent; when the roles are reversed, Stevens assigns the majority opinion. A citizen activist named Sherman Skolnick accused the chief justice and another Illinois Supreme Court justice of accepting bank stock from a politically connected Chicago lawyer in exchange for deciding a case in his favor. Judicial Philosophy On the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, John Paul Stevens had a moderately conservative record. at 233. The Harvard Law School Environmental Law Society presented Justice Stevens with HLSs first Horizon Award, an award for outstanding contributions to the fields of environmental, energy, and natural resources law. He also wrote opinions that extended such rights to corporations, bucking a trend embraced by the Supreme Court since the 1930s of rejecting such rights in the economic sphere. Children: John Joseph, Kathryn Stevens Jedlicka, Elizabeth Jane and . They are turning confirmation proceedings for court nominees into political warfare and causing a crisis of legitimacy for the court. Why this world has different elements in different places. [No Supreme Court justice] has practiced the pragmatists trade more diligently and lucidly than Stevens., - Robert Judd Sickels, John Paul Stevens and the Constitution. Rejecting the advice of Barry Goldwater, who urged him to appoint the archconservative Robert Bork, and of his wife, Betty, who urged him to choose a woman, Ford chose Stevens as the finest legal mind I could find. The Senate enthusiastically agreed, by a vote of 98 to 0. He made similar concessions to former Justice Sandra Day OConnor. On the issue of abortion, however, Stevens has failed to persuade Kennedy to vote consistently with the liberals. (The next most liberal justices were Ginsburg at 60 percent, Souter at 57.6 percent and Breyer at 54.9 percent.). (A portrait of Rutledge hangs in Stevenss chambers. To Justice Stevens, that meant the standards of decency that the court used to determine when a punishment crossed the constitutional line had evolved into the cruel and unusual., Over the years I became more and more unhappy with the failure of the court to impose adequate procedures in capital litigation, he told me when I interviewed him four years ago. I recently asked Post and Siegel to identify a progressive vision for the next liberal justice that could mobilize Democratic voters as well as provide an effective counterweight to the four movement conservatives on the Roberts Court. Sometimes the draft is pretty short, Stevens told me, but at least I write enough so that Ive had a chance to think it through. Stevens said writing a first draft was terribly important because you often dont understand a case until youve tried to write it out.. No. Mr. Ford had certainly cared about judicial ideology: As a congressman in 1970, he led the failed attempt to impeach Justice William O. Douglas for being too liberal, saying he had endorsed hippie-yippie-style revolution.. With the retirement of Justice Harry A. Blackmun in 1994, Stevens became the senior associate justice, a position second in authority only to the chief justice. 5 Ways John Paul Stevens Made a Mark on the Supreme Court How John Paul Stevens' Views Evolved Over 34 Years on the - HISTORY Of course, I didnt realize at the time we wrote it that the independent counsel was going to get involved, and we didnt realize that the president wasnt going to tell the truth!, Nevertheless, Stevens insisted, it wasnt fair to blame the court for having precipitated Clintons impeachment. Except maybe Justice Ginsburg. A totally unjust conviction, I can assure you, Stevens told me with passion. He just had five votes on his side!, Stevens himself, however, has been notably successful in building majorities by courting his fellow justices in particular, Kennedy. Stevens has no security agents in Fort Lauderdale he says they would only attract attention and is so low-key that most of his neighbors dont seem to realize they have a Supreme Court justice in their midst. By treating inmates as no more than slave[s], the majority decision demeans the concept of liberty itself, Stevens wrote. As the court moved right during the past 20 years, Stevens increasingly saw it as his role to interpret the Constitution with fidelity to all of American history, rejecting the claim of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and Judge Robert Bork that the original understanding of the 18th-century framers is all that matters. Replacing Justice Stevens is harder because Stevens plays so many critical roles on the current court: Hes the leader of the liberal wing, the best opinion writer on the court and, simultaneously, the justice most able to build surprising coalitions, Kendall said. at 430 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). A principled, practical, and moderate jurist, Stevens has been a stalwart and fair-minded supporter of the most reviled minority in America, the accused or convicted offender, even though doing so was often politically difficult or unpalatable. His paternal grandfather, James W. Stevens, made a fortune as the founder of the Illinois Life Insurance company, and in 1927, his father, Ernest J. Stevens, built the Stevens Hotel in Chicago, now the Hilton Chicago, which he called the largest and finest hotel in the world. Built for a staggering price of $30 million, the Stevens hotel included 3,000 guest rooms, a movie theater and an ice cream factory. He wrote the majority opinion in F.C.C. He devoted more attention to using his new assignment power to build majorities and to persuade the swing voters, Sandra Day OConnor and Kennedy, to join the liberal block. He loves tennis, golf and bridge. {{currentYear}} American Bar Association, all rights reserved. In a 1984 dissent, he objected to a ruling that said prisoners had no privacy rights even if guards undertook searches to harass them. Justice John Paul Stevens struck an important blow against the modern death penalty 17 years ago in a Supreme Court decision barring capital punishment for intellectually disabled people. Lapsed-Republican traitor to some (he was appointed by President Ford in 1975) and unflappable liberal lion to others, the jurisprudence of Justice Stevens has always been hard to predict or categorize. The question of how to replace the liberal Stevens would have surprised people in 1975 who confirmed him unanimously, said Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at the University of North Carolina who advised Democrats during Sotomayors confirmation hearings. Georgia (1976), Justice Stevens concurring "The time for a dispassionate impartial comparison of the enormous costs that death penalty litigation imposes on society with the benefits that it produces has surely arrived." Stanford v. Kentucky (1989), Justice Stevens dissenting After the chief justice speaks, each of the remaining justices speaks in order of seniority, so that Stevens speaks second. On Percys recommendation, President Nixon appointed Stevens to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago in 1970. Byron R. White | Oyez Cambridge, MA 02138, 2022 The President and Fellows of Harvard College, International Legal Studies & Opportunities, Syllabi, Exam and Course Evaluation Archive, Sign Up for the Harvard Law Today Newsletter, Consumer Information (ABA Required Disclosures). Justice John Paul Stevens - Harvard Law Review Here are some. The first is that the government has a duty to behave impartially, rather than favoring one group over another for partisan or sectarian reasons. For example, when Kennedy joined the liberal justices in striking down a Texas law that outlawed homosexual behavior, Stevens assigned him the opinion. It has a very strong obligation to be impartial, and not use its power to advance political agendas or personal agendas., Consider affirmative action, an area in which many people believe Stevens became more liberal. Because it had some seriously harmful effects., His conclusion was a long time coming. Human Rights Hero: Justice John Paul Stevens - American Bar Association She is also a best-selling author and a co-host of the Slate Political Gabfest, a popular podcast. It is questionable whether Obama, in the current political climate, could replace Stevens with a nominee who shares such strong opinions, even if that were the presidents inclination. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Justice Stevens has often been sympathetic to the claims of criminal defendants and people who say they were subjected to unlawful discrimination. So I really dont think Ive changed my views about this., Stevens has been prescient in cases involving race discrimination. Your membership has expired - last chance for uninterrupted access to free CLE and other benefits. Returning from the war in 1945, Stevens thought of becoming a high-school English teacher, like his mother, but instead was persuaded by his brother to enroll at Northwestern University Law School on the G.I. "Retired Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, John Paul Stevens, died this evening at Holy Cross Hospital in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, of complications following a stroke he suffered on July 15. After the justices hear the oral arguments, they meet in a private conference to deliberate. Im just disagreeing with changes that the others are making. His own politics, he added, were far from liberal, noting by way of example that he believes in the powers of the free market and isnt sure if the minimum wage is a sound policy. Two years later, he graduated first in his class, with the highest grade-point average in the history of the school. If Stevens is shrewd in the majority, he is fierce in dissent. I just feel I have an obligation to expose my views to the public.. And he wrote major dissents in two of the courts most hard-fought recent 5-to-4 decisions, one ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns, the other that corporations may spend freely in candidate elections. To the contrary. Ms. Bazelon is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. When Stevens wrote in 2008 that his experience had convinced him the death penalty could not be applied constitutionally, Scalia wrote in reply that it is Justice Stevens experience that reigns over all.. But prior to Sonias joining the court that was true with the possible exception of Ruth Ginsburg.. He also assigned several dissents last term to his usually mild-mannered liberal colleagues Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and David H. Souter that inspired some of their most scathing and memorable expressions of frustration with the courts turn to the right. He has been a staunch advocate of limiting the power of government to endorse religious viewpoints or to align itself too closely with religious practice. Justice Stevens wrote separately in that 2005 case, Roper v. Simmons, to affirm his belief that constitutional interpretation is and must be an evolving process. But a bigger loss for liberals, who are already seeing their victories at the Supreme Court dwindle, will be Stevens skills at building majorities. I was very fond of Bill Brennan loved the guy and had great admiration for him, Stevens said. There is not a scintilla of evidence of any concealment or fraud attempted, the court noted. Replacing a conservative justice with a liberal would make a difference, but the four justices consistently on the right are younger and show no signs of leaving. But he has made few close friendships on the court, with the exception of Souter, and during Stevenss early years, he became known as something of a maverick. Human Rights is delighted to name him our Human Rights Hero. He was the quintessential gentleman and scholar. If you disagree you should say so. I think my rhetoric was probably a little strong, he continued, but the federal law authorizing racial preferences for highway contracts was a slapdash statute that was based on pork-barrel politics, benefiting one group of contractors rather than citizens as a whole. Stevens joined two of his former law clerks on the Ames bench: the Hon. WASHINGTON In nearly 35 years on the Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens went from idiosyncratic maverick to the leader of the courts liberal wing. But Stevens disagrees with Borks exclusive emphasis on original intent: Originalism is perfectly sensible. Among Justice Stevenss liberal admirers, his flexible approach to the law has been cause for celebration: He was the moderate Republican appointed by President Gerald Ford who evolved into the enlightened liberal leader of an increasingly conservative Supreme Court. Stevens told me he was troubled by the fact that Yamamoto, a highly intelligent officer who had lived in the United States and become friends with American officers, was shot down with so little apparent deliberation or humanitarian consideration. He and his wife have a condominium in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and they spend two weeks a month there from November through April. Stevens noted how important such materials were to inmates and dissected the prisons claims that prison safety demanded such censorship, opining that the prisons decision to ban certain publications was based on personal prejudices or categorical assumptions rather than individual assessments of risk. Id. at 1546 (Stevens, J., concurring). He had a longstanding policy, he said, of not granting extended interviews; but he indicated he was now ready to talk publicly about his life and legacy, as well as the newly divided court. . In his time on the court, so lengthy that one advocacy group has compiled a list of the greatest opinions Stevens wrote while in his eighties, the justice has left a liberal imprint. Stevenss work on the Commission of 1969 brought him to the attention of Senator Charles Percy of Illinois, a moderate Republican who had decided to promote merit appointments to the federal bench instead of political cronies or ideologues. Kessler is the author of several edited volumes, including The Oxford Handbook of Political Theology, co-edited with Shaun Casey (Oxford University Press, forthcoming); Political Theology for a Plural Age (Oxford University Press, 2013); and Mystics: Presence and Aporia, co-edited with Christian Sheppard (University of Chicago Press, 2003). @emilybazelon Facebook, Why Justice Stevens Turned Against the Death Penalty, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/opinion/stevens-supreme-court.html. Richard Epstein, a libertarian law professor at the University of Chicago, said Stevens deference to government power comes at the expense of the Constitutions emphasis on small government, economic liberties and property rights. Stevens cited Rutledges dissent when he wrote a landmark majority opinion in the 2004 Rasul case, which allowed foreign nationals held at Guantnamo Bay to challenge their detention in U.S. courts. John Paul Stevens, who served on the Supreme Court from 1975 to 2010 and died Tuesday, at the age of ninety-nine, belonged to a vanished tradition on the Court and in American life: moderate. Jul 17, 2019 By Christine Perkins Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, the second longest-serving justice in the Court's history, died July 16, at the age of 99. They provided, in effect, a list of the very qualities that defined the mature vision of Justice Stevens. During his first year on the bench, in November of 1976, Stevens visited Harvard Law School to preside over the 1976 Ames Moot Court competition. He has not taken a categorical approach in free speech cases and has instead adjusted the level of First Amendment protection to the value of the speech in question. Stevens was 90-years-old when he stepped down from the Supreme Court in 2010. The work led to his being selected by President Nixon for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, and then by Ford to replace Justice William Douglas. In April, for example, in a 5-to-4 case, the court allowed a lawsuit to proceed against the Environmental Protection Agency for its refusal to regulate global warming under the Clean Air Act; by citing several of Kennedys previous opinions in his own opinion, Stevens persuaded Kennedy to stay in the liberal camp. In a dissent in a case about a high-speed police chase, he said things used to be different on the nations roads. The wrenching experience informed the young John Stevenss thinking about criminal law, and he has been alert in his decisions to the possibility of prosecutorial misconduct and wrongful convictions. On the Death Sentence | by John Paul Stevens - The New York Review of Books It's time to renew your membership and keep access to free CLE, valuable publications and more.