Supreme Court Justice Stevens dies
Moderate Midwest Republican evolved into a savvy, sometimes passionate leader of court’s 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-longestserving 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 Justice 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’ 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 criticized the limitations Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and his fellow conservatives put on Congress’ 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 grandfather, James W. Stevens, was the founder of the Illinois Life Insurance Co. and owned the LaSalle Hotel, which Justice Stevens’ father, Ernest, managed.
In 1927, the family opened The Stevens Hotel in Chicago, billed as the largest hotel in the world at the time. Stevens enjoyed a privileged childhood: He attended private schools affiliated with the University of Chicago, met celebrities such as aviators Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart at the hotel, and was lucky enough to be in the crowd at Wrigley Field on Oct. 1, 1932, when Babe Ruth hit his famous “called shot” home run off Cubs pitcher Charlie Root.
But the Stevens businesses went bankrupt in the Depression and Justice Stevens’s father, his grandfather and his uncle, Raymond Stevens, were indicted on a charge of alleged financial misconduct.
Shortly after the indictment, his grandfather James suffered a stroke and was excused from trial; Raymond committed suicide. A Chicago jury convicted Ernest in 1933 of embezzling $1.3 million. But his conviction was overturned in October 1934 by the Illinois Supreme Court, which criticized the prosecution for bringing the charges, noting that “there is not a scintilla of evidence of any concealment or fraud attempted.”
The tragic experience reduced the formerly wealthy Stevens family to a middleclass lifestyle and taught Stevens an enduring lesson in the harm that even wellto-do citizens can suffer from overzealous prosecution and other flaws in the justice system.
Stevens graduated from the University of Chicago in 1941 with a bachelor’s degree in English and was starting to study for a master’s degree in the same subject when a dean persuaded him to take Naval intelligence training instead. Stevens joined the Navy as an intelligence officer Dec. 6, 1941 — the day before Pearl Harbor. He would later joke that his commissioning had provoked the Japanese to attack, because they took it as a sign of U.S. desperation.