John Paul Stevens: An Independent Life

by Bill Barnhart, Gene Schlickman

During Justice Sonya Sotomayor’s recent confirmation hearings, the idea of “biography” played a high-profile role in the debate. How much does a person’s experience affect his or her judicial opinions? Should personal history be a key consideration when determining qualifications to sit on the highest court in the land? In this impeccably researched book, journalist Bill Barnhart and retired lawyer and former legislator Gene Schlickman paint a detailed portrait of Justice John Paul Stevens’s remarkable life and tenure on the Court. Through vivid family history and a careful look at his work on the bench, Barnhart and Schlickman offer the first biography of the second longest serving Supreme Court justice of the modern era—one who has proudly earned the title of the Court’s most prolific dissenter.
To provide a nuanced and multifaceted look at the justice, Barnhart and Schlickman interviewed Stevens and an extraordinary number of Stevens’s friends and family members, former clerks, current colleagues, politicians, and court watchers. They spoke with such public figures as former President Ford, former Ford chief of staff Donald Rumsfeld, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Interviews with Stevens’s children and one of his brothers provide personal insights into the man behind the robe. Tales of his childhood, of growing up in an affluent family in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, and of the family business, including The Stevens Hotel (now the Chicago Hilton and Towers), create a rich portrait of the independent man and judge. Intimate anecdotes from Stevens’s former law clerks reveal the lighter side of some of the most serious work in the country.
Barnhart and Schlickman also give careful consideration to Stevens’s career. They trace his early years as a Chicago lawyer, his appointment to the federal appeals bench in Chicago, and his ultimate nomination to the Supreme Court by Republican President Ford. They examine his best-known opinions, including his emotional dissents in Texas v. Johnson and Bush v. Gore. They trace his growth as a molder of Court decisions. In an era of an increasingly politicized judiciary, the story of Stevens’s life, as a lawyer who joined the bench with no political or ideological baggage, is an urgent reminder of the importance of judicial impartiality and the need to cultivate it. This vibrant biography will be of interest to those fascinated by the inner workings of the Supreme Court as well as those who simply want to learn more about one of Chicago’s favorite sons.

Genres: Biography, Law, Nonfiction

324 pages, Hardcover

First published April 21, 2010

Reviews

[Bruce · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I write this review former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is the oldest man ever to serve
on the court. If he makes it on April 20, 2020 he will be 100 years old and the only one ever to mark
a century of mortality. He is also to date the last Protestant to serve on the court. They've had none
appointed since.

Stevens came from a respectable upper middle class family whose father owned a department store and a pair of hotels which he lost during the Depression. Dad was convicted of embezzlement in the
30s and said conviction was later overturned. It left Stevens with a lifetime of concern for due
process showing in his work. Stevens at the age of 12 attended the 3rd and 4th games of the 1932
World Series and is last known survivor to see Babe Ruth call his shot in the 3rd game. Stevens says
he did just that, but witnessing history was a small comfort to a kid who saw his beloved Cubs go down four straight to the Yankees.

Graduation from the University of Chicago and war service in the Navy followed. He got his law
degree from Northwestern and did a stint as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Wiley B. Rutledge
during 1947-48. Stevens was a leading member of the Chicago bar in private practice and had the
good fortune to make friends with Illinois Senator Charles H. Percy. He was the man who sponsored his appointment with President Nixon to the 7th circuit Federal Court of Appeals in 1970.

In 1975 when William O. Douglas retired Stevens got support from both Senator Percy and from
Attorney General Edward Levi to fill the vacancy. Stevens was appointed by President Ford and approved without much fanfare 98-0 to the Supreme Court. You'd never see that today in this highly charged era.

Stevens was and is a moderate without any real axe to grind ideologically. It accounts for the mixed bag of votes and opinions he had over the years. He was an opponent for instance of affirmative action. He did support some gun control laws and starting out as a supporter of
capital punishment grew opposed to it as more death penalty cases came before the Supreme Court.

Most famously he was a dissenter in the famous Bush v. Gore case before the Supreme Court that
ordered a stop to the recount in Florida. No case was more partisan and ideologically charged by
its very nature than that one. Being an appointee of a GOP president made no difference with him.
Stevens wrote the dissent on that one.

He has still universal respect of the legal community and even at the age of 99 speaks out in retirement. In 2015 when the Obergfell case decided that same sex marriage was legal Stevens went to his former place of work at the Supreme Court to show support.

A good man without ideological trappings or hindrances. We need more judges like him on the
court especially in the top court.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though short, this biography of Justice John Paul Stevens still manages to provide some insight into his life history and his time on the Supreme Court. Though I would have preferred to read more about some of the cases Stevens was involved in, I think Barnhart and Schlickman intended to use the cases as brief examples of how Stevens' Supreme Court tenure was an extension of his work ethic and the independent nature that he displayed throughout his life.

All in all, this is a highly readable biography and should interest most people (like me) who are interested in the workings of the Supreme Court and its justices.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book to learn a little more about Justice Stevens. I believe that I learned about his strong interest in individual liberty and his views of the importance of independence in the judiciary. This book was easy to read. Some legal details but not so much as to make the book out of touch or hard to process. It is good to see and study the backgrounds of the people who serve our country at this very high, unelected level.

[Duncan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of good biographical information. Pitched more at the lay reader than lawyers, and not all that convincing about something I always found interesting about his jurisprudence, namely the strong bias against the church in any kind of church-state issue and for a narrow reading of the Free Exercise Clause. I've read rumors about where these views originated, but the book doesn't acknowledge the rumors; I wish it had. (The book's argument for why Justice Stevens was in fact in the mainstream on the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause is not very convincing.) Still, a good portrait; I learned a lot, particularly about his years in private practice.

[University of Chicago Magazine]

Bill Barnhart, MST’69, MBA’81
Coauthor

From our pages (Sept–Oct/10): "Drawing on interviews with the recently retired Supreme Court justice’s family, friends, clerks, and colleagues, this biography of John Paul Stevens, U-High’37, AB’41, presents a detailed portrait of a judge known for reasoned dissent. From his years in Hyde Park through this year’s heated debate over the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision allowing corporations unlimited support of independent political campaign broadcasts, the authors portray Stevens as a bold voice in American public life."

[Giuseppe · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my top beloved justices. An overall good take on the man and his jurisprudence.