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Written by Lisa Neff, Staff writer
Apr 22, 2010
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens announced earlier this spring that he plans to retire from the nation’s highest court, creating another opportunity for Barack Obama to name a justice.
Stevens has served 34 years on the Court.
Obama, in a statement to the press, hailed Stevens, who “courageously served his country from the moment he enlisted the day before Pearl Harbor to his long and distinguished tenure on the Supreme Court.
“During that tenure he has stood as an impartial guardian of the law. He’s worn the judicial robe with honor and humility. He has applied the Constitution and the laws of the land with fidelity and restraint.”
Stevens announced his retirement 11 days before his 90th birthday: “Having concluded that it would be in the best interests of the Court to have my successor appointed and confirmed well in advance of the commencement of the Court’s next term, I shall retire from regular active service as an associate Justice,” Stevens wrote in a letter to the president, stating his retirement would be “effective the next day after the Court rises for the summer recess this year.”
In his more than three decades on the Court, Stevens, a Ford appointee, has voted to limit the use of the death penalty, uphold affirmative action and broaden Roe v. Wade.
On LGBT issues, Stevens authored a dissent in Bowers v. Hardwick, the 1986 case in which the majority upheld a state law criminalizing consensual same-sex sex.
“The fact that the governing majority in a state has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice,” Stevens wrote.
While Stevens was in the minority on Bowers, he was in the majority on Lawrence v. Texas, the High Court decision overturning consensual sodomy laws in the United States.
Stevens also was among the majority in overturning the Colorado law preventing the state and its municipalities from banning bias based on sexual orientation.
In the landmark case in which the majority held that Boy Scouts of America is a publicly supported but private organization that can ban gay and lesbian scout leaders, Stevens voted in the minority.
“It is plain as the light of day that neither one of these principles – ‘morally straight’ and ‘clean’ – says the slightest thing about homosexuality,” Stevens said of the Boy Scouts pledge. “Indeed, neither term in the Boy Scouts’ Law and Oath expresses any position whatsoever on sexual matters.”
Obama said he would move quickly to name a replacement – and that the nominee would be like Stevens.
“I’ll seek someone in the coming weeks with similar qualities: an independent mind, a record of excellence and integrity, a fierce dedication to the rule of law and a keen understanding of how the law affects the daily lives of the American people,” Obama stated. “It will also be someone who, like Justice Stevens, knows that in democracy powerful interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens.”
