John Paul Stevens

New Yorker Writer: Second Amendment, ‘Properly Understood,’ Allows For Liberal Gun-Control Measures
By Tom Johnson | October 3, 2015 | 11:17 AM EDT

In recent years, some advocates of increased gun control have called for repeal or revision of the Second Amendment, but Adam Gopnik believes that either would be superfluous.

In a Friday article, Gopnik asserted that “the only amendment necessary for gun legislation…is the Second Amendment itself, properly understood, as it was for two hundred years in its plain original sense. This sense can be summed up in a sentence: if the Founders hadn’t wanted guns to be regulated, and thoroughly, they would not have put the phrase ‘well regulated’ in the amendment.”

Column: Ex-Justice Stevens Is Busy Pushing Book Urging Giving the Feds Even MORE Power
By Cal Thomas | April 24, 2014 | 12:10 PM EDT

Honestly, unless you are a big government liberal, how many people think the federal government should have more power than it already exercises over its citizens?

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, 94, thinks the Constitution needs at least six amendments in order to bring the country more in line with what he believes is good for us. He outlines them in his new book, "Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution." It is a revealing look into liberal thinking and the ideological opposite of radio talk show host Mark Levin's book, "The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic." More about that in a moment.

NYT's Liptak Leads With Dissent in Supreme's 6-2 Race Ruling, Laments Citizens United Case
By Clay Waters | April 23, 2014 | 8:31 AM EDT

Even though the Supreme Court voted 6-2 to uphold Michigan's ban on affirmative action, New York Times's Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak in his lead story in Wednesday's paper first quoted Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent, the "most passionate and most significant dissent of her career."

Liptak also promoted liberal ex-Justice John Paul Stevens's tirade against money in politics in a Tuesday interview, with the reporter lamenting that the Citizens United case -- in which the Court made the pro-free-speech ruling that government can't ban election spending by corporations -- had become "a judicial landmark."

Do Conservative Justices Have a Partisan Agenda, PBS's Woodruff Asks Liberal Ex-Justice
By Paul Bremmer | April 22, 2014 | 4:17 PM EDT

On Monday’s PBS NewsHour, anchor Judy Woodruff sat down for a conversation with former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, and she tried to get the amiable, elderly jurist to criticize his more conservative former colleagues. Stevens, to his credit, didn’t take the bait.

The interview focused on Stevens’ new book about six amendments he would like to see added to the Constitution. Near the end of the discussion, Woodruff sought to make waves by getting Stevens to charge conservatives on the court with a partisan agenda:

Stephanopoulos Pushes Liberal Justice Stevens to Bash GOP Audience
By Scott Whitlock | September 29, 2011 | 12:53 PM EDT

"Good Morning America's" George Stephanopoulos on Thursday invited retired Supreme Court Judge John Paul Stevens to bash the audience of a GOP presidential debate. The ABC host repeatedly offered up softballs to the liberal Stevens, asking at one point, "I don't know if you saw it, but there was actually a moment in one of the presidential debates where's the number of executions in Texas was cited and the crowd cheered."

After cutting to a clip from the debate, Stephanopoulos prompted the ex-justice of the nation's highest court to offer a critique on a political party: "What did you think?" The segment also aired on Wednesday's "Nightline."

[See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Bozell Column: Glorifying 'Great' Liberal Judges
By Brent Bozell | November 30, 2010 | 10:13 PM EST

America was founded on the principle of representative democracy: the government would make policy based on the consent of the governed. Liberal elitists have grown increasingly impatient with this unenlightened system, and more and more, they are relying on judicial activists to remake society in their desired image. Far from being tribunes of the people, these judges are honored by the media elite for going around public opinion – and the Constitution – whenever the liberal impulse beckons.

CBS’s “60 Minutes” earned the title “Syrupy Minutes” on November 28 with a thoroughly one-sided tribute to the “great” liberal Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, with a focus on how this “great” man publicly suggested George W. Bush was a tyrant.

Pelley hailed how Stevens had “shaped more American history than any Supreme Court justice alive.” He especially underlined how liberals see Stevens’ opinions on the rights of terrorist suspects as “among the most important of his career.”  The detention center at Guantanamo Bay is a legal and political mess. One could easily blame the “historic” Justice Stevens; CBS lauds him.

CBS's Pelley Promotes Claim Supreme Court 'Stole' 2000 Election for Bush in John Paul Stevens Interview
By Kyle Drennen | November 29, 2010 | 12:30 PM EST

In a softball interview with retired liberal Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens on Sunday's 60 Minutes, correspondent Scott Pelley touted Stevens's opposition to the court ruling on the 2000 presidential election: "He thinks [Bush v. Gore] is one of the Court's greatest blunders....There were many people in this country who felt that the Supreme Court stole that election for President Bush."

Pelley introduced the segment by proclaiming that Stevens "has shaped more American history than any Supreme Court justice alive" and made "decisions that have changed our times." The decisions Pelley focused on were the Justice's most liberal: "It was Stevens who forced a showdown with President Bush over the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and Stevens who tried to stop the court from deciding the presidential election of 2000."

To Media and Left, Wartime Service Unimportant for Supreme Court
By Sarah Knoploh | May 27, 2010 | 1:25 PM EDT

The United States is fighting two wars - in Iraq and Afghanistan - so it's natural that the nation's leaders have a solid understanding of what war is about. But President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court has no wartime experience and if she is confirmed, that would mean no member of the highest court would have served in the military in or near combat.

This is a major shift for a nation with a proud military tradition. In the past 100 years, the United States has fought two World Wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the Gulf War. American servicemen and women fought in the Philippines, Grenada, Panama, Somalia and Bosnia and many more. Given the nature of the terror threat America faces, more countries probably will likely join that list.

The three major broadcast networks have ignored this issue since Obama's May 10 nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court. Kagan does not have any military experience and is considered by some as anti-military. Yet, out of 17 stories on ABC, CBS and NBC since Kagan was named, not one has even mentioned the issue of wartime experience.

This, despite liberal arguments that a judge's experience is key to his or her decisions, and that the most lionized of progressive Supreme Court justices was an emphatically proud veteran of the Civil War, whose tombstone lists his war service before his court tenure.  

Breaking: Obama Picks Elena Kagan for Supreme Court
By NB Staff | May 10, 2010 | 12:56 AM EDT

From ABCNews.com reported moments ago:

President Obama has selected Solicitor General Elena Kagan as his second nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to the Associated Press.

If her nomination is approved by the Senate, Kagen would fill the seat left open by the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens and become the fourth woman ever to sit on the nation's highest court.

Bozell Column: Hollywood's Powerful Interests vs. Ordinary Citizens
By Brent Bozell | April 24, 2010 | 10:03 AM EDT

When Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement, President Obama promised he would appoint someone like Stevens, who “knows that in a democracy, powerful interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens.”

In the world of politics, that phrase is self-explanatory. In the cultural arena, it’s more murky. When it comes to First Amendment cases on broadcast indecency, who is the “powerful interest” and who was the “ordinary citizen”? The roles are now reversed.

The president can’t use that analogy, because the powerful interests are now in Hollywood, facing the millions of regular Americans who oppose graphic violence, gratuitous sex, and avoidable profanity on television. Sadly, judges like Stevens have labored ever harder to protect perverse televised “expression” like orgy scenes or “wardrobe malfunctions” on CBS as somehow the sun-kissed summit of all free-speech causes.

Honoring How Justice Stevens Channeled His 'Inner Wise Latina Woman'
By Tim Graham | April 17, 2010 | 6:46 PM EDT

Newsweek's Dahlia Lithwick and law professor Sonja West wrote for Slate.com about how empathy is a much better quality than diversity in Supreme Court justices: "If we can't in fact have a court that looks like America, we should seek a court that feels for America." But this push grew really weird when they suggested retiring Justice John Paul Stevens was somehow a Latina:  

He grew up white, male, heterosexual, Protestant, and wealthy. At no point in time was he a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay or a frightened teenage girl. And yet, over the decades, his rulings and written opinions repeatedly showed us that he could see the world through the eyes of those with very different life experiences from his own. In other words, he tapped his inner 'wise Latina woman' when the case called for it, and we are all better for it.

Perhaps they've also imagined him having the ability to take the lead away from Jennifer Lopez in the movie Selena. Lithwick and West concocted the idea that the media threw a fit against the "empathy" principle, somehow confusing the media and their "war on empathy" with objections from the Republican minority:
NYT's Timothy Egan: Not a Single Liberal on the 'Extreme' Supreme Court? Really?
By Clay Waters | April 16, 2010 | 10:46 AM EDT
Timothy Egan, a New York Times reporter for 18 years before turning into a liberal blogger at nytimes.com, demanded in a Wednesday night posting that the next Supreme Court justice hail from a law school other than Harvard or Yale: "Supreme Club."
At last count, there were about 200 law schools in the United States accredited by the American Bar Association, but apparently only two of them -- Harvard and Yale -- can be a path to serving on the highest court in the land.

It was surprising enough to see that with the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court will not have a single Protestant among its black-robed elite. But equally jaw-dropping was the fact that without Stevens, every member of the court has attended Harvard or Yale law school.
Fair enough. But he goes off the rails claiming that Stevens, who has held down the liberal wing of the court for years, is actually a moderate. In fact, Egan seems to go further than even liberal former Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse in bizarrely claiming that there are no liberals on the court, just four moderates, balanced, presumably, against five conservatives! This on a court that includes, besides Stevens, former ACLU lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Stevens, one of four moderates on the Court, has held that seat. He is not just the last World War II veteran to serve, but as a product Northwestern University Law School, he succeeded a very iconoclastic justice, William O. Douglas, whose law school days were not spent in Cambridge or New Haven.