‘It’s a Long Story’: Justice John Paul Stevens, 98, Is Publishing a Memoir


By Adam Liptak
Nov. 26, 2018

WASHINGTON — Four years after Justice John Paul Stevens retired from the Supreme Court in 2010, his wife, Maryan, threw a surprise party for his 94th birthday. The gathering of old friends summoned vivid memories of a long and eventful life, and it gave him an idea. He should write a memoir.

“I just started writing after that party,” Justice Stevens said by phone the other day from his home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “It kind of set me off.”

The book, “The Making of a Justice: My First 94 Years,” will be published in May, not long after Justice Stevens’s 99th birthday.

“It’s a long story,” Justice Stevens said.

He was born to a prominent Chicago family that operated what was then the largest hotel in the world, the Stevens Hotel, with 3,000 rooms. He met celebrities like Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh, and he was at Wrigley Field for Game 3 of the 1932 World Series to see Babe Ruth’s fabled called-shot home run.



He was a Navy cryptographer, an accomplished lawyer and a respected appeals court judge. When President Gerald R. Ford nominated him to the Supreme Court in 1975, he was confirmed by a unanimous vote. Three decades later, Ford expressed satisfaction with his choice, who had by then emerged as the leader of the court’s liberal wing.

“I am prepared,” Ford wrote, “to allow history’s judgment of my term in office to rest (if necessarily, exclusively) on my nomination 30 years ago of Justice John Paul Stevens to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Justice Stevens’s memoir also considers many scores of Supreme Court decisions in which he participated. “It almost seems I was writing two separate books,” he said, “the first one about the time before I went on the court and the second one about the many, many terms I was on the court.”

On the phone, he singled out three decisions as grave errors, noting that he had dissented in all of them. The first was District of Columbia v. Heller, the 5-to-4 ruling in 2008 that recognized an individual Second Amendment right to own guns.



“The combination of its actual practical impact by increasing the use of guns in the country and also the legal reasoning, which I thought was totally unpersuasive,” he said, “persuaded me that the case is just about as bad as any in my tenure.”

He said he had taken an extraordinary step in trying to head off the decision. Five weeks before Justice Antonin Scalia circulated his draft opinion for the majority, Justice Stevens sent around a draft of what he called his probable dissent. He said he could not recall ever having done anything like that.

“I thought I should give it every effort to switch the case before it was too late,” he said.

The effort failed. But Justice Stevens wrote that he helped persuade Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who was in the majority, to ask for “some important changes” to Justice Scalia’s opinion. A passage in the opinion, which Justice Scalia had plainly added to secure a fifth vote, said the decision “should not be taken to cast doubt” on many kinds of gun control laws.


The court’s “second-biggest error,” Justice Stevens said, was the Citizens United campaign finance decision. “Money in politics — it’s hard to believe the extent of it,” he said.

Justice Stevens, center, during his confirmation hearing in 1975. He was confirmed in a unanimous vote.

The third-biggest mistake, he said, was Bush v. Gore, the 2000 decision that handed the presidency to George W. Bush. “It was really a disgrace,” he said.

Justice Stevens said he had kept up with recent controversies over Supreme Court vacancies, and he expressed disappointment at Republican senators’ refusal in 2016 to consider President Barack Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick B. Garland.

“I certainly think Garland should have gotten a confirmation hearing,” Justice Stevens said. “That was really a most unfortunate thing, because he is so very well qualified. He is not a member of one party or the other. He is just a good judge. Of course, actually Kavanaugh is also a good judge.”



Justice Stevens declined to elaborate on his remarks in October questioning Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s fitness for the Supreme Court based on concerns about his temperament. “I’d really rather not comment,” he said. “I was criticized for expressing my opinion on that occasion, and I guess I’ll just stick with that.”

Justice Stevens did say that it had been a mistake for Justice Kavanaugh and his colleagues to participate in a ceremonial swearing-in at the White House.

“I have been opposed to ceremonies at the White House,” Justice Stevens said. “It gives the impression that the court is subordinate to the executive, which I think is quite wrong.”

I spoke to Justice Stevens before the exchange between Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and President Trump about political bias among federal judges, but there is little doubt that he would have taken the chief justice’s side.


Justice Stevens decided to step down on the day he delivered his dissent from the bench in the Citizens United case. He had stumbled over and mispronounced several words. “Unbeknownst to me,” he wrote, “I apparently had suffered a mini-stroke.”

“That was it,” he said on the phone. “I made the decision that day. After I went to see the doctor, I sent a letter to the president right away.”

The experience did not cause him to rethink his position on term limits for Supreme Court justices, he said.

“I’ve never been in favor of them,” he said. “It presents an arbitrary termination point for a justice’s service. I know I, of course, would have served a substantially shorter time if there had been term limits.”


Maryan Stevens died in 2015, and Justice Stevens said his life these days is a quiet one.

“I play duplicate bridge and I play golf and I go swimming once in a while,” he said. “But I’m not quite as active as I used to be.”

Asked what he hoped readers would take away from his memoir, he said, “I’d like them to think it’s an interesting read.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/1...-stevens-memoir.html

Well, I have absolutely nothing good to say about the man.

If the Court were made up of men (and women) who followed the Constitution, it wouldn't matter who they were, they wouldn't get famous, and the country would be far better off.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
Well, I have absolutely nothing good to say about the man.

Yep.

Another example of a justice that allows party leaning and personal belief influence his decision making. Let’s hope he soon follows his wife.

quote:

“The combination of its actual practical impact by increasing the use of guns in the country and also the legal reasoning, which I thought was totally unpersuasive,” he said, “persuaded me that the case is just about as bad as any in my tenure.”

Isn't it the legislature's job to consider practical ipmact, and the judicial's job to consider constitutionality?

Why do they even consider the social effect? If there is a law, and they cannot prove it violates the constitution, abridges certain rights, etc, then it should stay a law, regardless of the impact. Too simple? Am I wrong?

Pathetic and disappointing.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
Pathetic and disappointing.

Exactly.

Every term, SCOTUS decides cases - many are unanimous, but most cases of political significance leave a divided court. Every justice that ends up in the minority, by definition, thinks the case was wrongly decided. A justice with any integrity and respect for the process will make his best case in a dissenting opinion for history to consider and judge. Any other public statement is unprofessional.

quote:

“The combination of its actual practical impact by increasing the use of guns in the country and also the legal reasoning, which I thought was totally unpersuasive,”

Now this is what pisses me off. It doesn't matter what the practical impact is. I went to law school, I passed the bar exam. One need not be a legal scholar to know that the practical outcome of a decision is irrelevant.

Is it constitutional or not? That's the only question. If the practical outcome is contrary to what the public wants, we have a legislative branch that can change the Constitution via an amendment.

quote:

Originally posted by esdunbar:

quote:

“The combination of its actual practical impact by increasing the use of guns in the country and also the legal reasoning, which I thought was totally unpersuasive,”

Now this is what pisses me off. It doesn't matter what the practical impact is. I went to law school, I passed the bar exam. One need not be a legal scholar to know that the practical outcome of a decision is irrelevant.

Is it constitutional or not? That's the only question. If the practical outcome is contrary to what the public wants, we have a legislative branch that can change the Constitution via an amendment.

Well said!

Yeah, zero fucks what that windbag thinks or says.

Ain't that just the NYT, though? Stevens whines about his losses and the gray bimbo tries to present it as liberal heroism.

He should go fuck himself.