John Paul Stevens

Enduring Justice

IN LATE 1975, WITH AMERICA STILL REELING from the scandals of the Nixon presidency and the trauma of the Vietnam era, President Gerald Ford tapped an appeals- court judge from Chicago, John Paul Stevens, to fill a recently vacated seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. “The objective of President Ford and his staff was to find somebody who was as apolitical as possible and above reproach in terms of integrity,” says Jeffrey Fisher, who clerked for Stevens in 1998–99. “Those were the Justice’s two calling cards all the way through his career.”

Over the next nearly 35 years, until his retirement from the court in 2010, Stevens would play a role in shaping most areas of the law, influential in majority opinions and firm in dissents. His tenure was marked by a practical jurisprudence and an increasingly progressive sensibility: although he was chosen by a Republican, he emerged as a liberal leader as the Supreme Court moved to the right, and his own views on issues like the death penalty and affirmative action turned to the left over time.

By the time of his death in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on July 16 at the age of 99, a day after suffering a stroke, he had become a figure of historic importance, a vocal advocate for constraining the federal government in wartime and empowering it to protect civil rights. “He passed away peacefully with his daughters by his side,” the Supreme Court said in a statement.