Justice John Paul Stevens
Today’s Justice of the Day is: JOHN PAUL STEVENS. Justice Stevens was born on this day, April 20, in 1920.
Justice Stevens was born in Chicago, Illinois, the state from which he would be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.A. in 1941, before going on to earn a J.D. from the Northwestern University School of Law in 1947.
In between completing his undergraduate career and starting law school Justice Stevens served as a United States Naval Reserve Lieutenant Commander (from 1942 to 1945). He became a Law Clerk to Justice Wiley Blount Rutledge in 1947, a position he left in 1948, the year he launched a career in private practice in his home town of Chicago that would span 22 years. In 1950 Justice Stevens became a Lecturer at his law school alma mater, working there until 1954, when he took the same position at his undergraduate alma mater’s law school (where he would work until 1958); concurrently, Justice Stevens was Associate Counsel to the Subcommittee on the Study of Monopoly Power at the United States House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary (in 1951) and a Member of the Attorney General’s Committee to Study Anti-Trust Laws at the United States Department of Justice (from 1953 to 1955). He was nominated to be a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit by President Richard M. Nixon (which was ultimately confirmed by the United States Senate) in 1970, where he would remain until his elevation to the SCUS.
Justice Stevens was nominated by President Gerald R. Ford on November 28, 1975, to a seat vacated by Justice William O. Douglas. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on December 17, and received his commission that day. Justice Stevens took the Judicial Oath to officially join the SCUS on December 19, and served on the Burger, Rehnquist, and Roberts Courts. He assumed senior status on June 30, 2010.
Justice Stevens is the third longest-serving Member of the SCUS to date, one of three living former Justices, and gained wide recognition as the unofficial leader of the Court’s liberals following the departure of Justices William J. Brennan, Jr. (in 1990) and Thurgood Marshall (in 1991). Despite his reputation for liberalism, he was not as monolithically left-leaning as he might have seemed to some, as seen in his vote to uphold the criminal sanction of those accused of burning the United States flag in Texas v. Johnson (1989). One or two deviations aside, Justice Stevens’ liberal-leaning judicial ideology emerged in just about every other controversial case he heard. Once he had gained enough seniority to consistently find himself the most senior Justice whenever one of the swing Justices sided with the SCUS’s left-leaning Members, he became famous for tactically selecting which Justice to assign the opinion to (which he did with an eye toward ensuring the majority held), as seen in his decision to give Justice Anthony M. Kennedy the opinion of the Court in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the case that resulted in the striking down of all remaining anti-sodomy laws around the country. His skill at working with moderate Members of the SCUS to build majorities was also displayed in the area of campaign finance, as in McConnell v. FEC (2003), which saw him writing (in part) with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to uphold virtually all of the campaign finance regulations contained in the famous McCain-Feingold Act (sadly the retirement of Justice O’Connor and her replacement by the far more conservative Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. has severely eroded Justice Stevens’ legal victories in this area).