Today
is the 95th birthday of retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul
Stevens, and I am writing in honor and appreciation of his long, fruitful life.
Stevens,
who was born in Chicago in 1920, was nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court by
President Ford in 1975. He served in that position for 35 years, retiring in
2010.
(It
is interesting to note that when he was appointed to the Supreme Court, he was
one of eight Protestants among the nine Justices. When he retired and was
replaced by Elena Kagan, a Jew, there were no longer any Protestants on the
Court.)
In
spite of retiring at the age of 90, Justice Stevens has continued to be active.
The picture on the left was taken last April 30 as he was testifying before the
Senate Rules Committee on Capitol Hill.
It
was also just last year that his new book, “Six Amendments: How and Why We
Should Change the Constitution,” was published. While all six of Justice
Stevens’s proposed amendments are significant, I am most interested in four of them.
Those
four would do away with political gerrymandering, would make it possible for
the U.S. Congress or states to limit the amount of money that could be spent in
election campaigns, would do away with the death penalty, and would change the
Second Amendment to read, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the Militia shall not be
infringed.
Since
I wrote about the latter issue previously (here), I will not
say more about that at this time.
With regard to the first issue mentioned
above, gerrymandering, as you know, means manipulating boundaries of electoral districts
so as to favor one party or group. Justice Stevens’s proposed amendment would address
the seriously flawed boundary lines for U.S. representatives which have been
drawn in many states across the nation.
The
highly controversial 5-4 “Citizens United” decision of the Supreme Court in January
2010 was strongly criticized by Justice Stevens. He wrote a 90-page dissenting
opinion, setting forth his unhappiness with the majority position.
It
is not surprising, therefore, that one of the six amendments to the
Constitution that he proposed in his 2014 book is about that decision.
In
his talk to the Senate Committee last year Justice Stevens said, “While money
is used to finance speech, money is not speech.” So Stevens’s proposed campaign
finance amendment would essentially overturn Citizens United, allowing Congress
to set “reasonable limits on the amount of money that candidates for public
office, or their supporters, may spend in elections.”
In
1976, the year following his appointment to the Supreme Court, Justice Stevens
voted to uphold the death penalty. When he retired 34 years later, he said that
decision was the main one he regretted.
In
his 2014 book, he says that retribution is the only legitimate justification
for preserving capital punishment—and he doesn’t think that is a good or
sufficient reason.
So
Justice Stevens now advocates amending the Eighth Amendment to include the
words “such as the death penalty” as an example of “cruel and unusual
punishment,” which is currently prohibited.
At
the time of his retirement in 2010, J. Brent Walker, executive director of the
Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and a member of the Supreme Court
Bar, wrote, “Justice Stevens
has been a thoughtful, diligent jurist who has served the Court and this
country admirably.”
The
retired Justice has continued his meritorious public service by his book
advocating significant Constitutional amendments.
Happy
birthday, Justice Stevens—and thanks for all you have done!
.jpg)