Justice was leader of high court liberal wing
John Paul Stevens, a moderate midwestern Republican and former antitrust lawyer from Chicago who evolved into a savvy and sometimes passionate leader of the Supreme Court’s liberal wing and became the third-longest-serving justice on the high court before his retirement in 2010, died Tuesday at a hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 99.
The cause was complications from a stroke that he suffered Monday, according to an announcement from the Supreme Court. The only justices who served longer were William O. Douglas, whom Stevens replaced in 1975, and Stephen J. Field, a nominee of President Abraham Lincoln who served for much of the late 19th century.
During his 35-year tenure, Stevens left his stamp on nearly every area of the law, writing the court’s opinions in landmark cases on government regulation, the death penalty, criminal law, intellectual property and civil liberties.
Stevens also spoke for the court when it held presidents accountable under the law, writing the 1997 decision that required President Bill Clinton to face Paula Jones’s sexual harassment suit, and the 2006 opinion that barred President George W. Bush from holding military trials for prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base without congressional authorization.
But it was in his frequent dissenting opinions that Stevens set forth a view of the law that seemed increasingly — but not automatically — liberal as the years went by and as the court itself shifted right.
A strong proponent of federal power, Stevens sharply criticized the limitations Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and his fellow conservatives put on Congress’s power to define and remedy violations of federal law by the states.
In Bush v. Gore, the 2000 election case that helped George W. Bush win the presidency, Stevens lamented in dissent that the five Republican justices who backed Bush would “lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land.”
John Paul Stevens was born in Chicago on April 20, 1920, the youngest of four sons. The family lived in Hyde Park, near the University of Chicago. His mother was a high school English teacher.
His first marriage, to Elizabeth Sheeren, with whom he had four children, ended in divorce. In 1979, he married Maryan Simon.
A son from his first marriage, John Joseph Stevens, was a Vietnam War veteran, and died of cancer in 1996 at 47. Justice Stevens later recused himself from ruling on a case involving war veterans’ exposure to Agent Orange, an herbicide linked to cancer and other diseases.
A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.
At the recommendation of U.S. Sen. Charles H. Percy of Illinois, a moderate Republican, President Richard M. Nixon appointed Stevens to the Chicago-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in November 1970.
Five years later, again with the support of Percy and another Chicago friend, then-Attorney General Edward Levi, Justice Stevens received President Gerald Ford’s nomination to replace retiring Associate Justice William O. Douglas on the Supreme Court. He was confirmed by the Senate 98-0 and took the oath of office on Dec. 19, 1975.
Sporting his signature bow ties, Stevens quickly became known as an unpredictable thinker who showed his independence by having his law clerks separately review all petitions for certiorari to the court, rather than participating in the centralized “pool” made up of clerks from the other eight justices.
In 2012, President Barack Obama, who had chosen Solicitor General Elena Kagan to replace Stevens after his retirement in June 2010, bestowed on Stevens the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor.
Perhaps a more personal tribute occurred on his final day on the bench, when lawyers and spectators throughout the U.S. Supreme Court chamber wore bow ties in his honor.
In retirement, Stevens launched an active and, at times, controversial second career as a writer and commentator. He freely expressed agreement and disagreement with the court’s decisions, including recent ones. He published a memoir of five former chief justices he had known, as well as a second book recommending six constitutional amendments.
“I think there is one vote that I would change and that’s one — was upholding the capital punishment statute,” he told National Public Radio in 2010. “I think that we did not foresee how it would be interpreted. I think that was an incorrect decision.”