John Paul Stevens (April 20, 1920 – July 16, 2019) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1975 to 2010. He was the second-oldest and fourth-longest-serving justice in U.S. Supreme Court history. At the time of his death in 2019 at age 99, he was the longest-lived Supreme Court justice ever. His long tenure saw him write for the Court on most issues of American law, including civil liberties, the death penalty, government action, and intellectual property. Despite being a registered Republican who throughout his life identified as a conservative, Stevens was considered to have been on the liberal side of the Court at the time of his retirement.
Born in Chicago, Stevens served in the United States Navy during World War II and graduated from Northwestern University School of Law. After clerking for Justice Wiley Rutledge, he co-founded a law firm in Chicago, focusing on antitrust law. In 1970, President Richard Nixon appointed Stevens to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Five years later, President Gerald Ford nominated Stevens to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy caused by the retirement of Justice William O. Douglas. He became the senior associate justice after the retirement of Harry Blackmun in 1994. After the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist in 2005, Stevens briefly served as acting Chief Justice before the appointment of John Roberts. Stevens retired in 2010 during the administration of President Barack Obama and was succeeded by Elena Kagan.
Stevens's majority opinions in landmark cases include Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Apprendi v. New Jersey, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., Kelo v. City of New London, Gonzales v. Raich, U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, and Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency. Stevens is also known for his dissents in Texas v. Johnson, Bush v. Gore, Bethel v. Fraser, District of Columbia v. Heller, Printz v. United States, and Citizens United v. FEC.
Early life and education (1920–1947)
Stevens was born on April 20, 1920, in Chicago, Illinois, to a wealthy family from Hyde Park. His paternal grandfather had formed an insurance company and held real estate in Chicago, and his granduncle owned the Chas A. Stevens department store. His father, Ernest James Stevens (1884–1972), was a lawyer who later became an hotelier, owning two hotels: the La Salle and the Stevens Hotel. The family lost ownership of the hotels during the Great Depression, and Stevens's father, grandfather, and an uncle were charged with embezzlement; the Illinois Supreme Court later overturned the conviction, criticizing the prosecution. His mother, Elizabeth Street Stevens (1881–1979), was a high school English teacher. Two of his three older brothers also became lawyers.
A lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, Stevens was 12 when he attended the 1932 World Series between the Yankees and the Cubs in Chicago's Wrigley Field, in which Babe Ruth allegedly called his shot. Stevens later recalled: "Ruth did point to the center-field scoreboard. And he did hit the ball out of the park after he pointed with his bat, so it really happened." He also had the opportunity to meet several notable people of the era, including the famed aviators Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh, the latter of whom gave him a caged dove as a gift.
The family lived in Hyde Park, and Stevens attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools where he graduated in 1937. He later attended the University of Chicago, where he majored in English, was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated with highest honors in 1941. While in college, Stevens also became a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity.
He began work on his master's degree in English at the university in 1941 but soon decided to join the United States Navy. He enlisted on December 6, 1941, one day before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and served as an intelligence officer in the Pacific Theater from 1942 to 1945. Stevens was awarded a Bronze Star for his service in the codebreaking team whose work led to the downing of Japanese Admiral Yamamoto's plane in 1943's Operation Vengeance. He also earned the World War II Victory Medal and later received the highest United States civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from Barack Obama.
Stevens married Elizabeth Jane Shereen in June 1942. Divorcing her in 1979, he married Maryan Mulholland Simon that December; that marriage lasted until Simon's death in 2015 following complications from hip surgery. He had four children: John Joseph (who died of cancer in 1996), Kathryn (who died in 2018), Elizabeth, and Susan.
With the end of World War II, Stevens returned to Illinois, intending to return to his studies in English, but was persuaded by his brother Richard, who was a lawyer, to attend law school. Stevens enrolled in the Northwestern University School of Law in 1945, with the G.I. Bill paying most of his tuition. Stevens graduated in 1947 ranked first in his class with a J.D. magna cum laude, having earned the highest GPA in the school's history.
After receiving high recommendations from several Northwestern faculty members, Stevens served as a law clerk to Supreme Court justice Wiley Rutledge during the 1947–48 term.
Following his clerkship, Stevens returned to Chicago and joined the law firm of Poppenhusen, Johnston, Thompson & Raymond (now Jenner & Block). Stevens was admitted to the bar in 1949. He determined that he would not stay long at the Poppenhusen firm after being docked his pay for the day he took off to travel to Springfield to swear his oath of admission. During his time at the firm, Stevens began his practice in antitrust law.
In 1951, he returned to Washington, DC, to serve as associate counsel to the Subcommittee on the Study of Monopoly Power of the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. During this time, the subcommittee worked on several highly publicized investigations in many industries, most notably Major League Baseball.
In 1952, Stevens returned to Chicago and, together with two other young lawyers with whom he had worked at Poppenhusen, Johnston, Thompson & Raymond, formed his own law firm: Rothschild, Stevens, Barry & Myers. It soon developed into a successful practice, with Stevens continuing to focus on antitrust cases. His growing expertise in antitrust law led to an invitation to teach the "Competition and Monopoly" course at the University of Chicago Law School, and from 1953 to 1955, he was a member of the Attorney General's National Committee to Study Antitrust Laws. At the same time, Stevens was making a name for himself as a first-rate antitrust litigator and was involved in a number of trials. He was widely regarded by colleagues as an extraordinarily capable and impressive lawyer with a fantastic memory and analytical ability, and authored a number of influential works on antitrust law.
In 1969, the Greenberg Commission, appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court to investigate Sherman Skolnick's corruption allegations leveled at former chief justice Ray Klingbiel and then-current chief justice Roy Solfisburg, named Stevens as its counsel, meaning that he essentially served as the commission's special prosecutor. The commission was widely thought to be a whitewash, but Stevens proved them wrong by vigorously prosecuting the justices, eventually forcing them from office. As a result of the prominence he gained during the Greenberg Commission, Stevens became the second vice president of the Chicago Bar Association in 1970.
Stevens's role in the Greenberg Commission catapulted him to prominence and was largely responsible for President Richard Nixon's decision to appoint Stevens as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 1970. His nomination was put forth by a former University of Chicago classmate, Illinois Senator Charles H. Percy.