A member of the U.S. Supreme Court since 1975, John Paul Stevens has developed a reputation as a judicial centrist on the High Court, although many of his more well-known opinions are marked by a liberal bent.
Born on April 20, 1920, Stevens descended from Nicholas Stevens, who emigrated to America in 1659 after serving as a brigadier general in Oliver Cromwell's army. Stevens's father was a businessman and lawyer; he designed Chicago's Stevens Hotel and was its original managing director.
A political moderate during his college days at the University of Chicago, Stevens graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1941. During World War II he served with the U.S. Navy and was awarded the Bronze Star. After the war he studied law at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, graduating first in his class in 1947.
Stevens began his legal career as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice WILEY B. RUTLEDGE. In 1948 he joined the Chicago firm of Poppenhausen, Johnston, Thompson, and Raymond, specializing in litigation and Antitrust Law. In 1951 he served as associate counsel on a study of monopoly power for a subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives. Upon returning to Chicago in 1952, Stevens founded the firm of Rothschild, Stevens, Barry, and Meyers. Along with his private practice, he taught antitrust law at the Northwestern University and the University of Chicago law schools throughout much of the 1950s. He also served for a time as a member of the U.S. attorney general's National Committee to Study Antitrust Laws.
In 1970 President RICHARD M. NIXON appointed Stevens as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He became known for his scholarly abilities and his carefully written, clear, and succinct opinions. His first opinion on the court of appeals was a dissent in a challenge to the summary incarceration of an antiwar activist who had disrupted a legislative session (Groppi v. Leslie, 436 F.2d 331 [1971]). Stevens viewed the incarceration as unconstitutional, and the following year his minority view was vindicated by a unanimous Supreme Court (404 U.S. 496, 92 S. Ct. 582, 30 L. Ed. 2d 632).
The liberal Supreme Court justice WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS retired in 1975, providing President GERALD R. FORD his only opportunity to make a Supreme Court appointment. Stevens received high praise and active support from Ford's attorney general, EDWARD LEVI, and unqualified support from the American Bar Associaiton. During the Senate confirmation hearing, Stevens remarked that he believed that litigants should know how judges viewed the arguments and that it was important to make a record to note diverse views for reference in later cases.
John Paul Stevens
Stevens was unanimously confirmed on December 17, 1975, and took his oath of office two days later.
Until Stevens became a justice, new justices were typically seen but not heard. Instead, they usually joined dissents or concurrences without offering their own opinions. Stevens did not fit that pattern. During the 1976–77 term, Stevens had seventeen separate majority concurrences and twenty-seven separate dissents, far more than any other justice.
