John Paul Stevens

• Born: 20 April 1920
• Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
• Best Known As: Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court since 1975

John Paul Stevens is the senior associate justice on the United States Supreme Court, appointed in 1975 by President Gerald Ford. An Illinois native from a well-to-do family, Stevens earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago (1941), and his law degree from Northwestern University (1947). In between he was in the U.S. Navy (1942-45), working for the intelligence branch during World War II. Stevens had a stellar career as an antitrust lawyer before being appointed by President Richard Nixon to the U.S. Court of Appeals (7th Circuit) in 1970. When Ford appointed him to the Supreme Court, Stevens was considered a moderate conservative. Over the years he's earned a reputation as a frequent dissenter, and as the court has changed he's become known as a moderate liberal.

Justice Stevens is sometimes credited with helping to break the code that led to the downing of Japan's Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in World War II, but he denies any role, other than to say he was on watch when word came through of the operation's success.

For more information on John Paul Stevens, visit Britannica.com.

(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

John Paul Stevens (born 1920), appointed to the Supreme Court by President Richard Nixon in 1975, became a member of the "liberal" voting group on the Court which included Justices William J. Brennan and Thurgood Marshall.

Illinois native John Paul Stevens was a Phi Beta Kappa first-in-his-class University of Chicago magna cum laude graduate and law review graduate of Northwestern University. He clerked for Supreme Court Associate Justice Wiley B. Rutledge 1947-1948. He was serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit when President Ford selected him in 1975 as his sole appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. He was speedily confirmed 98 to 0.

On the Court, Justice Stevens - its junior justice for almost six years until Justice Sandra Day O'Connor replaced Justice Stewart in late 1981 - confounded prognosticators who thought they knew him as well as those who did not. Widely considered a "sure swing vote" in the Court's center, then generally composed of Justices White and Stewart, often joined by Justice Powell and occasionally by Justice Blackmun, he soon proved to be found far more frequently with the "liberal bloc" of Justices Brennan and Marshall, and increasingly so with the passing of time.

Stevens was not as doctrinaire as the other two liberals in all facets of civil rights and liberties, and he resolutely parted company with them on such high visibility issues as "reverse discrimination." Nevertheless his "pro rights" or "pro individual" score was consistently high, exceeded only by his two libertarian brethren and by Justice Blackmun in racial discrimination litigation. The women's rights group which opposed his nomination because of his alleged "blatant insensitivity" to sex discrimination quickly began to hail him as both sensitive and free of preconceived notions. Voting rights, free speech, free exercise of religion, separation of church and state, civil rights for African-Americans, children, and prisoners, and not excluding the criminal justice sector - the Stevens' record in all of these areas drew praise from liberal constituencies.

A "gadfly to the brethren," a personal loner, a legal maverick, he consistently challenged his colleagues. Always well-prepared and soft-spoken in his frequent colloquies with counsel in oral argument, he probed like a veritable explorer and was replete with novel legal theories. The latter was particularly notable in cases involving constitutional interpretation, where his jurisprudence permitted him a great deal more latitude than in statutory construction problems. A student of history, and beholden to the tenets of stare decisis he nonetheless recognized the importance of the moving finger of time - or, as Justice Oliver W. Holmes expressed it, he "felt necessities of the time." Yet, as he demonstrated so fervently in such stream-of-consciousness cases as Bakke, he did not ignore legislative language or clear legislative intent in favor of judicial fiat.

Although respectful and courteous, Stevens found it difficult to subsume his own ideas and interpretations to others in order to forge a numerically united front. This was in part because he wrote more dissenting and concurring opinions than any of his colleagues while lamenting the plethora of opinions handed down by the Court and the cascading number of cases accepted for review! He disagreed with the majority in fully 50 of 91 divided opinions in the 1983-1984 term. To dissent, of course, is one thing; but to engage in a flood of concurring opinions is quite another - for they all-too-often muddied the constitutional law waters and laid themselves open to the charge that they were ego trips.

Stevens found it extremely difficult to join a majority or dissenting opinion without some comment. Thus, in the delicate and difficult July 1983 holding in Barefoot v. Estelle, in which a badly divided Court upheld the expedited handling of a death row case, Stevens dissented from Justice White's controlling opinion on the procedural issue; but he then concurred in the majority's sanction of the prosecution's use of psychiatric testimony - thereby casting the Court's vote into a 5:3 equation. And early in 1984 he deemed it necessary not only to be the sole dissenter in an "original jurisdiction" jurisdictional case dispute, but he also filed a partial concurrence. That he was not the only justice to engage in that type of perfectionism does not gainsay the unfortunate effect it had upon the judicial process, let alone the public's comprehension.

In 1992, Stevens wrote the opinion for Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., in which the Court, by a 7-2 vote, ruled that cigarette manufacturers could be sued under state products liability laws, particularly those grounded in charges of fraud or misrepresentation about the dangers of cigarette smoking. A rash of lawsuits broke out country-wide. In March, 1997, the Liggett Group announced a sweeping settlement in 22 states that were suing the tobacco industry to recover Medicaid costs. This followed a public admission by Liggett officials that tobacco is addictive and causes cancer and heart disease.

If Stevens was not a jurisprudential or tactical on-bench leader, he was nonetheless an unceasing stimulator of reflection, of innovation, of disciplined literateness (witness his majority opinion for the 5:4 Court in the 1984 "Home Video Taping" case), and of cerebral combat in constitutional law logic and theory. His gift for elegant, pungent expression will grace the Court's annals.

Further Reading

The literature on Justice Stevens was sparse. A commendable early appraisal was Leonard Orland's "John Paul Stevens" in Leon Friedman (editor), The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789-1978 (1980). Justice Stevens' opinions - several of which were mentioned in this article - represented a good measure of his jurisprudence. In general, see Henry J. Abraham, Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court (1985).

• Born: Apr. 20, 1920, Chicago, Ill.
• Education: University of Chicago, B.A., 1941; Northwestern University School of Law, J.D., 1947
• Previous government service: law clerk to Justice Wiley B. Rutledge, 1947–48; associate counsel, Subcommittee on the Study of Monopoly Power, House Judiciary Committee, 1951; U.S. Attorney General's National Committee to Study the Antitrust Laws, 1953–55; judge, Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, 1970–75
• Appointed by President Gerald R. Ford Nov. 28, 1975; replaced William O. Douglas, who retired
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Dec. 17, 1975, by a 98–0 vote

John Paul Stevens has been an independent thinker on the Supreme Court. He has often written separate concurring opinions and dissenting opinions.

Justice Stevens has tended to support national government authority in cases on federalism, which has restricted the powers and independent activities of state governments. In particular, he has favored broad interpretations of the Constitution's “commerce clause” (Article 1, Section 8), which grants power to Congress to regulate trade among the states.

Justice Stevens has tended to support protection of individual rights, especially 1st Amendment freedoms of religion, speech, and assembly. He wrote notably for the Court, for example, in Wallace v. Jaffree (1985) to defend strict separation of church and state. In 1997 he led the Court in striking down a federal law designed to ban “indecent” material from the Internet in the case of Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union.

See also Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union; Wallace v. Jaffree

Sources

• Bradley C. Canon, “Justice John Paul Stevens: The Lone Ranger in a Black Robe”, in The Burger Court: Political and Judicial Profiles, edited by Charles M. Lamb and Stephen C. Halpern (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991)

A member of the U.S. Supreme Court since 1975, John Paul Stevens has developed a reputation as a judicial centrist on the High Court, although in recent years his voting has taken a more liberal turn.

Born on April 20, 1920, Stevens descended from Nicholas Stevens, who emigrated to America in 1659 after serving as a brigadier general in Oliver Cromwell's army. Stevens' father was a businessman and lawyer; he designed Chicago's Stevens Hotel and was its original managing director.

A political moderate during his college days at the University of Chicago, Stevens graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1941. During World War II he served with the U.S. Navy and was awarded the Bronze Star. After the war he studied law at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, graduating first in his 1947 class.

Stevens began his legal career as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Wiley B. Rutledge. In 1948 he joined the Chicago firm of Poppenhausen, Johnston, Thompson, and Raymond, specializing in litigation and antitrust law. In 1951 he served as associate counsel on a study of monopoly power for a subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives. Upon returning to Chicago in 1952, Stevens founded the firm of Rothschild, Stevens, Barry, and Meyers. Along with his private practice, he taught antitrust law at the Northwestern University and the University of Chicago law schools throughout much of the 1950s. He also served for a time as a member of the U.S. attorney general's National Committee to Study Antitrust Laws.

In 1970 President Richard M. Nixon appointed Stevens as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He became known for his scholarly abilities and his carefully written, clear, and succinct opinions. His first opinion on the court of appeals was a dissent in a challenge to the summary incarceration of an antiwar activist who had disrupted a legislative session (Groppi v. Leslie, 436 F.2d 331 [1971]). Stevens viewed the incarceration as unconstitutional, and the following year his minority view was vindicated by a unanimous Supreme Court (404 U.S. 496, 92 S. Ct. 582, 30 L. Ed. 2d 632).

The liberal Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas retired in 1975, providing President Gerald R. Ford his only opportunity to make a Supreme Court appointment. Stevens received high praise and active support from Ford's attorney general, Edward Levi, and unqualified support from the American Bar Association. During the Senate confirmation hearing, Stevens remarked that he believed that litigants should know how judges viewed the arguments and that it was important to make a record to note diverse views for reference in later cases. Stevens was unanimously confirmed on December 17, 1975, and took his oath of office two days later.

Until Stevens became a justice, new justices were typically seen but not heard. Instead, they usually joined dissents or concurrences without offering their own opinions. Stevens did not fit that pattern. During the 1976-77 term, Stevens had seventeen separate majority concurrences and twenty-seven separate dissents, far more than any other justice.

From the start, Stevens evinced a concern that the legal system give particular care to ensure the rights of the underprivileged, including aliens, illegitimate children, and prisoners. However, Stevens cannot easily be classified as either a judicial liberal or a conservative. In a judicial context, a conservative judge generally will not decide issues that he or she believes are within the province of legislatures. Moreover, a conservative typically votes to enhance government power in a conflict between government interests and individual rights. A judicial liberal, on the other hand, tends to favor individual interests and will look beyond the bounds of a statute and past interpretations of the Constitution to decide social policy questions.

For example, although Stevens is generally perceived as being sympathetic to the rights of prisoners, his sympathy has not necessarily translated into leniency for criminal defendants. Stevens wrote the opinion in United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 102 S. Ct. 2157, 72 L. Ed. 2d 572 (1982), wherein the Court held that police may search compartments and containers within a vehicle even though the contents are not in plain view, as long as the search is based on probable cause. Probable cause, the same standard needed to obtain a search warrant, is typically determined by a magistrate, but this case effectively gave that power to the police in searches of vehicle containers.

Stevens' nomination was opposed by some women's groups that claimed that he was unresponsive in several sexual discrimination cases while on the court of appeals. In 1981 he voted to uphold the all-male draft (Rostker v. Goldberg, 453 U.S. 57, 101 S. Ct. 2646, 69 L. Ed. 2d 478), and in another case he declined to consider the theory of comparable worth. On the other hand, he has typically voted to uphold Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147 (1973), and limit restrictions to a woman's right to abortion (Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 510 U.S. 1309, 114 S. Ct. 909, 127 L. Ed. 2d 352 [1994]); Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 111 S. Ct. 1759, 114 L. Ed. 2d 233 [1991]). In the 1997 case of Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681, 117 S. Ct. 1636, 137 L. Ed. 2d 945, Stevens spoke for a unanimous Court in allowing a sexual harass- ment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton to go forward. Stevens ruled that the Constitution does not afford a president temporary immunity, except in the most exceptional circumstances, for civil litigation arising from events that occurred before the president took office. The Court also held that Clinton was not entitled to a stay of proceedings during his term in office.

One of Stevens' earliest opinions was Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc., 427 U.S. 50, 96 S. Ct. 2440, 49 L. Ed. 2d 310, (1976). He wrote for a plurality of the Court, upholding Detroit zoning ordinances that prevented the concentration of "adult" establishments. The case was significant because the ordinance in question did not require a finding that the establishment dealt in legally obscene materials as a prerequisite to legal action. Before the ruling in Young, sexually oriented material that was not legally obscene appeared to be entitled to complete First Amendment protection. Stevens wrote that the material in question was so sexually explicit as to be entitled to less protection than other speech, stating that "few of us would march our sons and daughters off to war to preserve the citizen's right to see ‘Specified Sexual Activities' exhibited in the theaters of our choice." He reasoned that the zoning restriction did not totally prohibit the availability of the material and was a reasonable action by the city to further its interest in preserving the quality of urban life. This ruling has been the basis for other restrictions that fall short of an outright prohibition of communication that is sexually explicit but not obscene.

Justice Stevens, along with Justices Potter Stewart and Lewis F. Powell, Jr., acted as a swing vote in a series of death penalty cases in the mid-1970s. The Court upheld death penalty statutes providing for discretion in imposition but overturned those calling for mandatory death sentences. Stevens voted against the death penalty in cases of rape and dissented from a 1989 decision permitting an execution for someone who committed a murder at age sixteen or seventeen.

In Eichman v. United States, 496 U.S. 310, 110 S. Ct. 2404, 110 L. Ed. 2d 287 (1990), the Supreme Court ruled that flag burning was a form of expression protected by the First Amendment and overturned a federal statute that attempted to protect flags. The majority ruled that the statute had to withstand the most exacting scrutiny and could not be upheld under the First Amendment. Stevens wrote a dissent joined by conservative Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and two other justices, maintaining that the statute was consistent with the First Amendment.

Stevens wrote the opinion in BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore, 517 U.S. 559, 116 S. Ct. 1589, 134 L. Ed. 2d 809 (1996), the first case in which the High Court overturned a jury's punitive damages award. A jury awarded an automobile owner $4 million (later reduced to $2 million) when the manufacturer failed to disclose a refinished paint job on a new BMW. Stevens called the award "grossly excessive" and set out criteria to determine the propriety of punitive damage awards. The four dissenting justices in the case argued that the ruling improperly intruded into states' prerogatives.

In 1992 Stevens wrote the opinion for Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., 505 U.S. 504, 112 S. Ct. 2608, 120 L. Ed. 2d 407 (1992), possibly exposing the tobacco industry to huge monetary awards by opening the door to increased litigation for smoking-related deaths. In a 7-2 decision, the Court ruled that cigarette manufacturers that lie about the dangers of smoking or otherwise misrepresent their products can be sued under state laws. At issue was whether federal law preempts state common-law liability lawsuits; cigarette labeling is governed by federal law. The Court ruled that federal suits are the only avenue for pursuing failure-to-warn cases or claims of omissions in the manufacturer's advertising or promotions. However, litigants may sue in state court for claims of breaches of express warranties, claims that cigarette advertisements are fraudulent, and claims that a company hid the dangers of smoking from state authorities or conspired to mislead smokers.

Stevens also authored Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 105 S. Ct. 2479, 86 L. Ed. 2d 29 (1985), holding that a state cannot provide a moment of silence at the beginning of the school day for the express purpose of facilitating meditation or prayer. The Court held that the Alabama statute in question could not pass constitutional scrutiny.

Justice Stevens was married in 1942 and has four children. He and his first wife divorced in 1979, and he subsequently remarried.