John Paul Stevens

John Paul Stevens (2006)

John Paul Stevens (born April 20, 1920 in Chicago , Illinois - † July 16, 2019 in Fort Lauderdale , Florida ) was an American lawyer and from 1975 to June 28, 2010 a judge at the United States Supreme Court (Supreme Court ) . At the end of his term of office, he was both the oldest and longest serving judge at the US Supreme Court and assumed the duties of the chief judge when he was prevented or the office was vacant. On April 9, 2010, he announced in a letter to US President Barack Obama that he would resign from the Supreme Court judge in the summer of that year. He left office on June 28, 2010. Elena Kagan was sworn in as his successor on August 7, 2010 .

Life

Stevens was born in Chicago in 1920. He was married to Maryan Mulholland and had five stepchildren and four children from a previous marriage.

He studied at the University of Chicago and later law at the Northwestern University School of Law. During the Second World War he served as an intelligence officer in the US Navy from 1942 to 1945 and was awarded the Bronze Star . After the war, he served on the Supreme Court as clerk for Judge Wiley Blount Rutledge and was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1949. In 1947 he was awarded the degree of Juris Doctor with the title magna cum laude from the Northwestern University School of Law (Chicago) . From 1951 to 1952 he served as legal advisor to the Monopoly Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives and from 1953 to 1955 as a member of a government expert committee on competition law.

In 1970, US President Richard Nixon nominated him as a judge at the Federal Court of Appeals for the 7th District Court ( United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ). He served on this court as the successor to the late Elmer Jacob Schnackenberg from 1970 to 1975, when he was nominated by President Gerald Ford to succeed Judge William O. Douglas at the Supreme Court. Stevens was unanimously confirmed in office by the Senate with 98-0 votes.

Jurisprudence

Early on in his tenure, Stevens took a moderate route in his jurisdiction. He supported the re-admission of the death penalty in the USA and rejected Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) dismisses the admissibility of systematic preference for minorities ( affirmative action ) . Under the more conservative Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist , Stevens joined the liberal wing of the court on issues such as abortion rights and federalism .

Stevens' case law was considered rather idiosyncratic until the end of the 1990s. He was (like Judge Clarence Thomas ) often ready to represent unusual or minority opinions. He was neither a conservative originalist like the judges Scalia or Thomas, nor a representative of the left-liberal ideals of a “democratic” or “living” constitution like the judges Breyer and Ginsburg, nor a pragmatist like district judge Richard Posner . Rather, like Judge O'Connor , who had stepped down before him, and most American judges in general, he used one of these basic attitudes, sometimes the other. When the Supreme Court moved in a conservative direction in the late 1990s, Stevens was considered to be " more liberal " in his last 15 years and the last few years as the leader of the liberal wing, which mostly justified the dissenting votes against the conservative majority opinion.

On June 26, 2003, the Supreme Court declared the sodomy laws invalid by six votes to three . John Paul Stevens represented the majority opinion.

freedom of speech

This can be seen, for example, in its case law on the protection of freedom of expression under the first amendment to the constitution . Over the years, Stevens has become an advocate for extensive protection of the distribution of all content. So he was in the majority when the Ashcroft v. ACLU (2004) declared the legal ban on computer- simulated child pornography to be unconstitutional. In contrast, he represented in Texas v. Johnson (1989) - here as in other cases, obviously under the influence of his World War II experience - the minority opinion that burning a US flag does not constitute a constitutionally protected expression of opinion and can therefore be punished.

technology

Stevens was instrumental in many of the decisions of the Supreme Court relating to technical developments in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In 1978 he wrote The Decision Preventing Software Patents, as well as the 5-to-4 Sony v. Universal decision that prevented the VCR ban. Stevens argued that VCRs had many uses that were not in violation of copyright laws and that VCR manufacturers were not responsible for what their customers did with the equipment. Although it would be possible for the US Congress to ban the technology entirely, it would have to explicitly resolve this in a new law. A decision that also had a significant impact on later proceedings against the manufacturers of MP3 players.

He was also on copyright issues in Eldred v. Ashcroft 2003 the inferior opinion that Congress could not retrospectively extend the term of protection of works.

In a 1981 case that reopened the door to software patents, Stevens was 4 to 5 on the losing side. After the Supreme Court did not accept any software patent cases for a long time after the Federal Circuit was established, it ruled in Bilski v. Kappos such a case again. The Supreme Court, however, abstained from further evaluations on the question of patent law, Stevens wrote the 4-to-5 minor opinion, which would have generally declared patents on business processes invalid.

Honors

• 2008: Admission to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2008: Admission to the American Philosophical Society
• 2012: Presidential Medal of Freedom

supporting documents

1. ↑ Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens dies at 99 , CNN dated July 16, 2019
2. ↑ Facsimile of the letter (PDF file; 34 kB), made available on media.washingtonpost.com, accessed on April 9, 2010
3. ↑ Marc Pitzke: Judgment of the US Supreme Court: Basic Right to Wild West Defense. In: Spiegel Online . June 28, 2010, accessed October 5, 2018 . 
4. ↑ http://www4.law.cornell.edu/supct/justices/stevens.bio.html
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Timothy B. Lee: Farewell, Stevens: the Supreme Court loses its cryptographer in: Ars Technica, June 30, 2010
6. ^ Member History: John Paul Stevens. American Philosophical Society, accessed February 9, 2019 . 
7. ↑ The White House: President Obama Names Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipients (April 26, 2012, accessed May 30, 2012)

Web links

Commons : John Paul Stevens  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Wikiquote: John Paul Stevens  - Quotes

Wikisource: John Paul Stevens  - Sources and full texts (English)

• John Paul Stevens in the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges