Supreme Court Justice profiles tend to grab headlines infrequently — usually only every few years following a nomination or a particularly significant case decision. This week, however, Justice John Paul Stevens graces the cover of the New York Times Magazine. The article is a very pleasant read, and gives interesting insight into the man often labeled a "liberal icon" of our nation's judiciary. Along the way, Stevens touches upon everything from his ideological labeling (he considers himself a conservative), to his historical and contemporary approaches to issues of civil liberties:
As a law clerk, Stevens reviewed cases involving liberty and security after World War II. The experience, he told me, shaped his views about the importance of judicial oversight of the president’s aggressive actions in terrorism cases after 9/11. Stevens worked with Rutledge on a dissent from a 1948 opinion upholding the right of the attorney general to deport German nationals considered to be Nazis without any review by federal courts. Rutledge objected to the idea that federal courts couldn’t issue writs of habeas corpus because the Germans were held on Ellis Island rather than falling within the jurisdiction of a federal district court. Stevens cited Rutledge’s dissent when he wrote a landmark majority opinion in the 2004 Rasul case, which allowed foreign nationals held at Guantánamo Bay to challenge their detention in U.S. courts. (A portrait of Rutledge hangs in Stevens’s chambers.)I have little to say about the article's contents; everyone would be best-served by just going ahead and reading it. But those of you paying extra-close attention to the upcoming presidential election may wish to peruse the end for an idea of the shoes the next Democratic president may need to fill:
Stevens was also influenced by Rutledge’s dissenting opinion in the Yamashita case in 1946, in which the court upheld the power of a military commission to try and to execute a Japanese general in the Philippines in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Emphasizing the dangers of denying anyone within American jurisdiction a fair trial, Stevens once again cited Rutledge’s dissent in his own opinion in the Hamdan case in 2006, which struck down President Bush’s military commissions because they were not specifically authorized by Congress. (Congress authorized them later that year.)
I recently asked Post and Siegel to identify a progressive vision for the next liberal justice that could mobilize Democratic voters as well as provide an effective counterweight to the four movement conservatives on the Roberts Court. They answered that the next truly liberal justice would have at least four qualities. First, in an age when the conservative justices are determined to cut off access to the courts in cases from civil rights to terrorism, the next liberal justice would interpret the Constitution to provide “access to the courts to enforce the rule of law” and would “understand that even the most powerful president is not a king.” Second, the justice would “interpret the Constitution in light of the entire history of the nation, and not just in light of the Constitution’s drafting history.” Third, the justice would “interpret the Constitution to create conditions of equal liberty to participate in the life of the nation” — in areas ranging from abortion and sex equality to affirmative action and campaign finance reform. Finally, instead of reading the Constitution in a cramped, legalistic fashion, the justice would “interpret the Constitution to create a partnership between courts and the popular branches,” encouraging Congress and the American people to debate and define constitutional values. They provided, in effect, a list of the very qualities that defined the mature vision of Justice Stevens.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home