Politics: John Paul Stevens Supreme Court Analysis

Note that while I’m now doing a post on the most recent person who died that once served on the Supreme Court, I will not be starting a new theme of Supreme Court related posts this time around. Hopefully, there won’t be a vacancy until after January 20^th of 2021. A vacancy before the 2020 election would be the worst possible thing for this country. Anyways, I should get to the next post of this blog before too much time has passed and I miss my chance to post this.

John Paul Stevens might have been one of the greatest justices that we had on the court. He might have seemed like was random in some of his rulings, but I think that it served the country best that he had a place on it. His seat is now held by Elena Kagan. He had the sense to know when it was time to go. If he were still on the court when he died, that would have been bad for society in general. Even after he left the court, he had great opinions about the country.

Who put John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court? Why it was none other than Gerald Ford. This was the only justice that Gerald Ford was able to put on the court. Ford was a Republican. John may have labeled himself as a Republican, but generally sided with the liberal side of the court over and over again. Ford had no regrets about the appointment in question. I do wonder if the Democratic majority in the senate at the time might have had anything to do with the fact that he wasn’t really a Republican on the court. The vote for his confirmation was unanimous.

One of his smarter policies was that he was against presidential immunity. This is one of the smarter choices that he made. I have no idea if he was ever able to do much with this opinion like actually change the law in favor of sitting presidents being indicted. But at least he had a good choice of what should happen with it.

There were at least two notable dissents of his career. The first was Bush versus Gore. He felt that America would lose faith in its judicial system because of decisions like this. He isn’t far off with this thought. One of the last notable dissents that he did was Citizens United versus FEC. He didn’t think it was wise to overturn at least three previous cases with this ruling. And he was right to think that. Sadly, money and free speech are now the same thing, meaning that the richer you are, the more free speech you have.

He was the longest serving justice for quite some time. As that person, he was also the acting chief justice between the Rehnquist court and Roberts court. He was even part of the Supreme Court before the Rehnquist court started. I have no idea what all he might have done during this time as acting chief justice, outside of leading the court until a new chief justice was found. But a lot of people might never get this opportunity to be the most senior justice for so long.

While some people view some of his decisions as random, part of the reason why he might have had different opinions on different cases was because he was changing his views on things while learning on the job. If a man (or woman) doesn’t even change their mind, it could be a bad thing for people in general.

Another smart thing that he did was knowing when to call it quits. When he stumbled over some of his sentences on the infamous Citizens United case, he realized that he had been around longer than he should be. If he were still on the court when he died, it would be Trump naming a replacement. We don’t need Trump getting anyone else on the Supreme Court. Elena Kagan would not have his seat in his stead. And he still offered great opinions after leaving the court in question. He was able to give insight about things we wouldn’t have otherwise gotten.

When Brett Kavanaugh displayed horrible temperament during his confirmation hearings, we got to hear from John about why such a person shouldn’t be allowed on the Supreme Court. There was even a case about whether or not Brett should be punished for this behavior, but they seem to be treating him with too much leniency a la Trump. Apparently if he wasn’t on the court now, then Brett might have been able to be in the jurisdiction. But enough about that. All I know is that John was right to think that we don’t need people like Brett around.

There were at least three notable books that John Paul Stevens had written. One was released quite recently called The Making of a Justice: Reflections on My First 94 years. He talks about his time on the court and other parts of his life. Another book he wrote was Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir, where he detailed his time in the judicial community before leaving. One that I might want to read sometime is Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution. In it, he details certain laws that he thinks we need to change.

John did regret some of his decisions on the court. One of those regrets was allowing the death penalty to happen in Gregg versus Georgia. I haven’t researched enough about the case and am in favor of capital punishment. I don’t know if John was a key vote in this or not. Now this was not a decision that I found bad, but I will get to those next.

One of his actually bad choices was saying that photo identification being required to vote was constitutional. I think that voter id laws are terrible and I wouldn’t know why anyone would be in favor of them at all. What good are they actually going to do for those that want to vote and are otherwise capable of doing so outside of this suppression law?

Another thing that John talked about was wanting to repeal the Second Amendment. While I do think that better gun laws are needed, an outright repeal goes too far. Plus, even if we think of just the law abiding gun owners, are they really going to return guns easily? Some might, but others would point their loaded guns at those that would seek to take them away from them and say, “Try taking it away.” Repealing the Second Amendment is unfeasible. That doesn’t mean that we should give up trying to make better gun laws to prevent mass shootings. It just means that we don’t need to get rid of the right to bear arms entirely.

That’s all that I can think of for this post. John Paul Stevens was certainly one of the better of all of the justices on the Supreme Court. He didn’t let his political affiliation prevent him from siding on the logical side of the law, even when it wasn’t enough to make the decision go his way. He was a great part of the court and it seems like we are missing too much from his departure from life and the court in general.