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Secret Lives of the Supreme Court: John Paul Stevens

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John Paul Stevens
April 20, 1920-
Birthplace: Chicago, IL
Nicknames: “The Fed Ex Justice,” “Wild Card”
Astrological Sign: Taurus
Term: December 19, 1975–present
Appointed By: Gerald Ford
Words of Wisdom: “Few of us would march our sons and daughters off to war to preserve the citizen’s right to see ‘Specified Sexual Activities’ exhibited in the theaters of our choice.”

Not since King Lear has an elderly man’s health been as intensely scrutinized as John Paul Stevens’. In 2008, he became the second-oldest person ever to sit on the Supreme Court. Since his departure would tilt the Court’s ideological balance, partisans on both sides of the political spectrum watched his every move with feverish anticipation. As a Republican justice whose voting record trended leftward from the day he arrived on the bench, the unassuming, bow-tied Midwesterner became a favorite target of conservatives. “We need somebody to put rat poison in Justice Stevens’ crème brûlée,” declared the right-wing firebrand Ann Coulter in 2006. After conservative Samuel Alito replaced moderate Sandra Day O’Connor in 2005, the liberal radio network Air America started playing the parody song “Hang On Stevens”—to the tune of the of the 1960s pop hit “Hang On Sloopy”—in a desperate attempt to keep the octogenarian justice from kicking the bucket.

A long time ago—a very long time ago—John Paul Stevens was a young man. He was born into a wealthy Chicago family on April 20, 1920. His grandfather, J.W. Stevens, had made the family fortune as the founder of the Illinois Life Insurance Company. His father, a hotelier, built the Stevens Hotel, now the Hilton Chicago, one of the city’s largest and swankiest. The palatial building took up an entire city block and featured 3000 guest rooms, a rooftop golf course, a barbershop, a movie theater, and an in-house ice cream factory. As children, Stevens and his brothers posed as models for the bronze sculptures that greeted guests in the hotel’s grand hall. Visitors constituted a veritable who’s who of Jazz Age society. Babe Ruth stayed there, as did Amelia Earhart. Charles Lindbergh dropped by after returning from his transatlantic flight to Paris and presented seven-year-old John Paul Stevens with a pet dove named Lindy.

The good times came to an end with the advent of the Great Depression. In 1934, he Stevens Hotel went bust, and Stevens’ father was found guilty of embezzling  $1.3 million to pay off his mounting debts. (“A totally unjust conviction,” John Paul still maintains to this day.) With no family sinecure to fall back on, Stevens considered a career in teaching instead. Then, caught up in the patriotic fervor that accompanied the outbreak of war in Europe, he enlisted in the Navy on December 6, 1941—just hours before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He saw no action, but worked as an intelligence officer in Washington, D.C., helping to break the code that led to the shoot-down of a plane carrying Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the mastermind of the Pearl Harbor attack. Stevens was awarded the Bronze Star for his efforts.

After the war, Stevens attended Northwestern University Law School, graduating in 1947 with the highest grades in school history. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Wiley Rutledge, then returned to Chicago to enter private practice. His successful prosecution of a public corruption case in 1969 attracted the attention of the new U.S. president, Richard Nixon, who appointed Stevens to the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1970. In one of the more noteworthy rulings during his tenure on the federal bench, Stevens wrote the majority opinion in the infamous “Seven Dirty Words” case involving the comedian George Carlin. Stevens’ ruling upheld the right of the FCC to punish radio stations for airing so-called “indecent” speech over public airwaves.

When President Gerald Ford was casting about for an inoffensive moderate to replace the departing William O. Douglas on the Supreme Court in 1975, he could not have found a better nominee than Stevens. Unquestionably qualified, he was universally respected on both sides of the aisle, and he cruised to Senate confirmation 98-0. One ensconced on the high bench, Stevens proved to be an independent-minded pragmatist. He voted to reinstate capital punishment and against affirmative action in college admissions, but sided with his liberal colleagues on issues such as abortion rights, gay rights and federalism. By the turn of the millennium, the political ground had shifted far enough to the right that Stevens was now widely considered one of the Court’s most liberal justices—hence the heated proxy war over the exact nature and timing of his departure from the Court.

I Will Squash You
Before he settled on a legal career, Stevens was one of the nation’s top squash players.

Tie One On
Stevens has a thing for bow ties—silk bow ties, to be precise. He wears them underneath his robes at all times, and is so obsessed with them that he often mentions bow ties in his opinions.  Once, during is days in private practice, an opposing attorney suggested to the court that lawyers in clip-on bow ties could not be trusted. Stevens quietly rose from his seat and untied his tie for all to see, then retied it and sat back down.

Poison Pen
While he’s known to be charming and warm-hearted in person, a caustic and occasionally nasty streak courses through Stevens’ Supreme Court opinion writing. In the 1970s, he gained a reputation for ridiculing the other justice’s reasoning in his dissents. On various occasions, he derided the majority for advocating criminal procedures more appropriate to the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany than the United States. Stevens also developed an irritating habit of quoting himself in his opinions. Oftentimes he would reprint passages from his own previous opinions (sometimes even from a lower court), in an effort to prove to his colleagues that he was right all along.

I’ll Fly Away
He’s left his mark on American jurisprudence, but Stevens also packs quite a carbon footprint—if his travel records are any indication. A licensed pilot and longtime flying enthusiast, Stevens spends much of his down time jetting around the country in his private plane. He often flies himself from Washington back to his home in Florida—even while the Supreme Court is in session. Asked once about his passion for planes, Stevens admitted that his dream was to take the president for a ride in his aircraft. “Any plane that contains the president becomes Air Force One,” he gushed. “I would be able to call the tower and say, ‘This is Air Force One!’”

Get Me My Sunscreen—and a Copy of Bowers v. Hardwick!
Stevens is the only member of the Court who refuses to stay in Washington while the Court is in session, an aversion he attributes to the capital’s inclement winter weather.

While his colleagues freeze in the D.C. cold, he prefers to dictate his opinions to his clerks poolside at his Florida condo. (Early on in his Supreme Court career, Stevens earned the nickname “the FedEx justice” because of his predilection for overnighting his opinions back and forth to Washington for transcription and editing. “That was cumbersome,” he later admitted, and ceased the practice.) He spends so much time reading briefs on the beach that he once had to shake the sand out of them upon his return to Washington. When he’s not tanning himself, Stevens adheres to a strict fitness regimen: a daily swim in the ocean, two or three rounds of golf and three games of tennis a week.

Pick a Card
Justice Potter Stewart gave Stevens his other nickname, “Wild Card,” in recognition of Stevens’ tendency to change his vote on a moment’s notice. Justice Byron White, who detested Stevens, came up with a less charitable variation on the moniker. He called Stevens “the one-eyed jack” behind his back.

Poetic Justice
Stevens is an amateur Shakespeare scholar who has publicly speculated that the Bard’s plays may have been written by Edward De Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. In 1988, he teamed up with fellow literary buffs, Justices Harry Blackmun and William Brennan, to hear oral arguments in a mock Supreme Court hearing about the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. After the “lawyers” finished their debate, Stevens and his colleagues came down on the side of the Bard, although Stevens conceded “I don’t think the contrary view is wholly frivolous.”

Take Me Out to the Ballgame
On September 14, 2005, the then 85-year-old justice fulfilled a lifelong dream by throwing out the first pitch at a game between the Chicago Cubs and the Cincinnati Reds at Wrigley Field in Chicago. “It was a thrill for him, an absolute thrill,” said his daughter Susan Mullen, who warmed him up for the big event. “It was more the little boy in him than the Supreme Court justice.” A lifelong Cubs fan, Stevens was in the stands for Game 3 of the 1932 World Series between the Cubs and the Yankees, at which Babe Ruth hit his famous “called shot” home run. Stevens keeps a scorecard from that game on the wall of his chambers at the Supreme Court.

Welcome to the Club
Baseball wasn’t the only game occupying Stevens’ mind in 2005. According to newspaper reports, Stevens became hooked on Sudoku number puzzles that year as well.

Dear Dave
Like a lot of older men, Stevens aggressively searches for ways to curb his flatulence. His fart inhibitor of choice is Beano, a dietary supplement designed to reduce gas in the digestive tract. Stevens is such a fan of the product that he once extolled its virtues in a letter to newspaper columnist Dave Barry. The letter, sent, according to Barry, “on his official John Paul Stevens stationery,” inspired a September 1991 Barry column entitled “The Winds of Change,” wherein the humorist tested out Beano’s efficacy on a visit to a Mexican restaurant.

Medical Marvel
It’s no wonder Stevens has lived longer than almost any other justice in history. Apart from his penchant for breaking wind, the man has an iron constitution. He has survived heart bypass surgery, had a polyp removed from his colon, and was briefly treated for prostate cancer in the early 1990s. Determined to defy his critics and live as long as possible, he now adheres to a strict a low-fat diet, eating only grapefruit for lunch.