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Remembering John Paul Stevens, 1920-2019
We are sad to mark the passing of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens earlier this week at age 99. He was the third longest serving justice at the time of his retirement in June 2010, just under 35 years after President Ford appointed him to the Supreme Court.
Born in Chicago, Stevens graduated from the University of Chicago in 1941. He served in the Navy during World War II as an intelligence officer in the Pacific Theater. After the war he attended Northwestern University School of Law and graduated first in his class. Stevens then served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Wiley Rutledge before entering private practice. He worked for law firms in the Chicago area, including one he helped form, for many years, dealing mostly with litigation and antitrust law. Additionally, he taught law classes part time and gained experience serving as counsel on Federal committees.
Stevens became a United States Circuit Judge for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in October 1970. He served in that capacity until November 1975 when President Ford nominated him to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the retirement of Justice William O. Douglass. “Judge Stevens is held in the highest esteem by his colleagues in the legal profession and the Judiciary and has had an outstanding career in the practice and the teaching of law as well as on the Federal Bench,” President Ford said in his nomination remarks. “I am confident that he will bring both professional and personal qualities of the highest order to the Supreme Court.”
The Senate quickly confirmed Stevens with a vote of 98-0 and he took his seat on the bench on December 19, 1975. Although he was registered as a Republican when he was appointed, over time he became viewed as part of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court. President Ford never regretted nominating Stevens. “He has served his nation well, at all times carrying out his judicial duties with dignity, intellect, and without partisan political concerns. Justice Stevens has made me, and our fellow citizens, proud of my three decade old decision to appoint him to the Supreme Court,” President Ford wrote in a letter honoring Justice Stevens in 2005. Stevens received a copy of the letter, which he reportedly displayed in his Supreme Court chambers.
Read historian Richard Norton Smith’s interview with John Paul Stevens from the Ford Presidential Foundation’s Gerald R. Ford Oral History Project.
Images: President Gerald Ford, Chief Justice Warren Burger, and John Paul Stevens at the U.S. Supreme Court Building for the Swearing-in of Stevens as an Associate Justice, 12/19/1975 (National Archives Identifier 6926435)
Letter from President Gerald R. Ford to Dean William Michael Treanor regarding Justice John Paul Stevens, 30 Years on the Supreme Court, 9/21/2005, from the Ford Post Presidential Office Files, Box A544, folder “Correspondence File, 2005 [To-Tu]”
Letter from Justice John Paul Stevens to President Gerald R. Ford, 10/11/2005, from the Gerald and Betty Ford Special Materials, Box A10, folder “Stevens, John Paul”