Stevens, John Paul (b. Chicago, Ill., 20 Apr. 1920), associate justice, 1975–. John Paul Stevens has a deserved reputation for independence and moderation, for being a jurist who is determined to reach the right result for the right reason. Born to a prominent Hyde Park family, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Chicago in 1941. During World War II, Stevens served in the Navy and earned a Bronze Star as a code‐breaker. At Northwestern University he was editor‐in‐chief of the law review and graduated in 1947 with the highest grades in the law school's history. He credits his law professors for his skepticism about legal abstractions and doctrines that either oversimplify complex issues or avoid the difficult work of judging actual cases or controversies. His understanding of judicial review was influenced by Supreme Court Justice Wiley Rutledge, for whom he clerked in 1947. That year in chambers began to form his judicial philosophy: courts always should zealously and steadfastly protect individual liberty against a background of respect for the elected branches of government, which are immediately responsible and accountable to the people.
Admitted to law practice in Illinois in 1949, Stevens specialized in antitrust law with prominent law firms and also taught the subject as an adjunct at both Northwestern and the University of Chicago law schools. He was Associate Counsel to the Subcommittee on the Study of Monopoly Power of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, 1951–1952, and a member of the Attorney General's National Committee to Study Antitrust Law, 1953–1955. He was active in the bar, serving as Second Vice President of the Chicago Bar Association and as
pro bono publico Counsel to the Special Commission of the Illinois Supreme Court that resulted in the resignation of two corrupt state supreme court justices in 1969. From 1970 to 1975, Stevens served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
When Justice
Douglas's retirement gave President Gerald Ford his only opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court Justice, he hoped his nomination of a moderate, reputable, and experienced judge who earned the American Bar Association's highest rating would help restore public confidence in government in the aftermath of the Watergate scandals. Hailed as a “lawyer's lawyer” and a “judge's judge,” Stevens was confirmed as the 101st Supreme Court justice by a Senate vote of 98 to 0 and took his oath on 19 December 1975.
At his Senate hearing, Stevens expressed a sense of judicial duty and a personal need to write a dissent when he disagrees with a decision and to write a separate concurring opinion when he does not agree with the reasoning of the majority. He believes doing so assures litigants that the Court has fully appraised their arguments and provides courts in future cases the benefit of diverse points of view. Consequently, he routinely publishes significantly more dissents and concurring opinions than any of his colleagues. Justice Stevens has a bespectacled‐and‐bow‐tied Walter Mitty appearance. He is always well‐prepared, thoughtful, and courteous to counsel. His questions go to the heart of the case and he seems genuinely interested in the answer. He pursues his internal intellectual life in the idiosyncratic, sometimes eccentric, legal analyses revealed in his opinions and in his off‐the‐bench lectures and writings. Justice Stevens's insights not infrequently get more attention from scholars than agreement from his colleagues. He is a lucid and skilled wordsmith whose hands‐on style is often quite literary and sometimes trenchant, as might be expected from a college English major who knows his own mind and who comes at the issues from a different perspective. He is someone who has a life beyond his work, whose interests include flying airplanes, tournament bridge, golf, tennis, reading, and travel. Affable and unassuming in person, he is popular and respected by his peers and in his profession.
When he was first appointed to the Burger Court, Attorney General Levi described the new nominee as “a moderate conservative.” But Justice Stevens has responded to an increasingly conservative Rehnquist Court and court‐watchers currently label him as a “liberal.” As the most senior associate justice, he assigns the writing of opinions in cases when the chief justice is in the minority, a prerogative he has used to some advantage. Stevens was prescient, at his confirmation hearing, when he testified, “I would not label myself, Senator.” He is not habitually liberal or conservative. Rather, he has a pragmatic, independent streak to delve into the interplay of the facts of the case and the constitutional values at stake.
Early on, Justice Stevens demonstrated his fundamental skepticism of Byzantine, judge‐made doctrines, in a concurring opinion disapproving of the Court's three‐tiered interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment: “There is only one Equal Protection Clause. …” (
Craig v. Boren, 1976). He inquires whether the challenged government classification is reasonable, considering the public purpose of the law, who is being disadvantaged, and how much harm is being suffered.
Justice Stevens demonstrates a concern for the least powerful in society. For example, he often dissents to argue for affording prisoners greater rights (
Hudson v. Palmer, 1984). He is sensitive to governmental discrimination against discrete and insular minorities of all kinds. He is skeptical of any claim of government immunity or sovereign immunity that would defeat an individual's remedy. He can usually be counted on to rule in favor of the defendant and against the government in a criminal case brought under one of the provisions of the Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth Amendments. His jurisdictional theory is that the Supreme Court should rarely if ever grant review on the petition of the government whenever the lower court has ruled in favor of the individual. On the headline issues during his tenure—the death penalty, abortion, right to die, and homosexual rights—he goes right down the line to vote in favor of individual liberty. Justice Stevens's views on affirmative action have evolved. Dissenting in
Fullilove v. Klutznick (1980), he would have sent the federal statute back for a second legislative look at a program that favored minority‐owned businesses in awarding government contracts because Congress had not carefully enacted the measure. But in
Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena (1995) he complained that the majority did not go far enough in approving such programs He assigned and joined Justice Sandra Day
O'Connor's landmark majority opinion declaring the constitutionality of race‐based university admissions (
Grutter v. Bollinger, 2003).
In
First Amendment cases, Justice Stevens rejects the Supreme Court's standard definitional analysis that distinguishes between categories of speech that are protected and other categories, like obscenity and fighting words, that are not protected. Instead, he has argued for a sliding scale so that more valuable speech is more protected than less valuable speech, and the Supreme Court has moved toward his approach. For example,
FCC v. Pacifica Foundation (1978) upheld a restriction on a radio broadcast of a program that was not appropriate for children. He can usually be counted on to protect speech, but he vigorously dissented in the case that upheld the right to burn the American flag (
Texas v. Johnson, 1989). A devout separationist, he was so concerned about religious strife and democracy that he dissented against the approval of school voucher programs in
Zelman v. Simmons‐Harris (2002).
Justice Stevens's federalism decisions are mixed. He led the Court to a ruling that a state did not have the power to impose term limits on its representatives and senators in the Congress in
U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995). He stridently dissented from the controversial decision in
Bush v. Gore (2000) that stopped the Florida recount and determined the outcome of the 2000 presidential election.
Justice Stevens's views of separation of powers are nuanced. In
Clinton v. Jones (1997), he wrote the opinion that allowed a private civil law suit against the president based on allegations of sexual misconduct prior to his term, and wrote: “As for the case at hand … it appears to us highly unlikely to occupy any substantial amount of petitioner's time” (p. 702). In hindsight, that decision led to the crisis of the Clinton impeachment. His unanimous landmark opinion in
Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (1984) declared that courts should defer to a federal agency's interpretation of the statute the agency is responsible for administering, in effect, deferring first to the agency's expertise and ultimately to Congress's supervisory law‐making prerogative.
Justice Stevens also has compiled a mixed record with respect to economic issues. He has usually rejected arguments that stringent land use regulations constitute a regulatory taking of property. Yet in
BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore (1996) Stevens, writing for the Court, concluded that a state punitive damage award was so grossly excessive as to violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In a speech, Justice Stevens once revealingly described the Constitution as “a mysterious document.” Over three decades, this worthy jurist has partaken of that mystery and reveled in it case by case.
Bibliography
Kenneth A. Manaster , Illinois Justice: The Scandal of 1969 and the Rise of John Paul Stevens (2001).
Judd Sickels , John Paul Stevens and the Constitution: The Search for Balance (1988).
John Paul Stevens , The Bill of Rights: A Century of Progress, University of Chicago Law Review 59 (1992): 13–38.
John Paul Stevens , The Freedom of Speech, Yale Law Journal 102 (1993): 1293–1313.
John Paul Stevens , Judicial Restraint, San Diego Law Review 22 (1985): 437–457.
Symposium: Perspectives on Justice John Paul Stevens, Rutgers Law Journal 27 (1996): 521–661.
Richard Y. Funston
; revised by
Thomas E. Baker
