EX-SUPREME COURT JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS DIES AT 99
Was author of decision in Kelo v. New London
Washington — John Paul Stevens, the bowtied, independent-thinking, Republican-nominated justice who unexpectedly emerged as the Supreme Court’s leading liberal, died Tuesday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., after suffering a stroke Monday. He was 99.
During nearly 35 years on the court, Stevens stood for the freedom and dignity of individuals, be they students or immigrants or prisoners. He acted to limit the death penalty, squelch official prayer in schools, establish gay rights, promote racial equality and preserve legal abortion. He protected the rights of crime suspects and illegal immigrants facing deportation.
He influenced fellow justices to give foreign terrorism suspects held for years at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval base the right to plead for their release in U.S. courts.
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 July 16 at a hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 99.
The cause was complications from a stroke that he suffered yesterday, 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.
And Stevens was the author of what may have been the court’s least popular decision in recent years, in Kelo v. New London, a 5 to 4 ruling in 2005 in which it upheld the right of local governments to make property owners sell out in favor of private developers.
Though conservatives decried the decision, Stevens defended it as an exercise of judicial restraint, a conservative legal principle. He argued that the result was dictated by precedent, and by deference to the decisions of legislatures that were still free to limit such property condemnations if they wished.
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’ 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.”
In 2004, when the court, citing technical reasons, dismissed the plea of U.S. citizen Jose Padilla, who was being held incomunicado as an enemy combatant, Stevens blasted the majority for ducking issues “of profound importance.”
“If this Nation is to remain true to the ideals symbolized by its flag, it must not wield the tools of tyrants even to resist an assault by the forces of tyranny,” he wrote.
Stevens’ reference to the flag harked back to the 1989 dissent in which the decorated Navy veteran of World War II joined Rehnquist and other conservatives in dissenting from a ruling that recognized a First Amendment right to burn the American flag.
“The ideas of liberty and equality have been an irresistible force in motivating leaders like Patrick Henry, Susan B. Anthony, and Abraham Lincoln, schoolteachers like Nathan Hale and Booker T. Washington, the Philippine Scouts who fought at Bataan, and the soldiers who scaled the bluff at Omaha Beach,” Stevens wrote in that case. “If those ideas are worth fighting for — and our history demonstrates that they are — it cannot be true that the flag that uniquely symbolizes their power is not itself worthy of protection from unnecessary desecration.”
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 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 Stevens’ father, his grandfather and his uncle, Raymond Stevens, were indicted for 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 sharply 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 middle-class lifestyle and taught Stevens an enduring lesson in the harm that even well-to-do citizens can suffer from overzealous prosecution and other flaws in the justice system.