When I heard the news of Justice John Paul Stevens’s death, I'd just finished teaching a summer course on the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the class, we studied how the court has become increasingly polarized along partisan lines, and why polarization diminishes the public’s perception that the Justices decide cases in a fair, impartial way.
The most important cases of the term involved controversial issues like adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census and theconstitutionality of political gerrymandering. These close decisions revealed deep ideological divisions among the justices, causing my students to wonder, “Were the justices acting in a nonpartisan way?”
Since his death, commentators and legal scholars across the political spectrum have praised Justice Stevens for his superb legal mind, his integrity and his collegiality.
Sitting justices have highlighted his devotion to a foundational principle of the American legal system: fairness.
Justice Elena Kagan, who filled Justice Stevens’s seat upon his retirement, said that he “had a real passion for justice — the insistence that our legal system be fair.”
Likewise, Justice Kennedy, his colleague for 22 years, emphasized that one question was always foremost in Stevens’s mind: “Is what the court is about to do fair to the injured party?”
Stevens’s concern for fairness is highlighted in his seminal 1986 dissenting opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick.
Disagreeing with the majority that the state of Georgia can deprive homosexuals of their rights, he asserted, while “the meaning of the principle that ‘all men are created equal’ is not always clear, it surely must mean that every free citizen has the same interest in ‘liberty’ that the members of the majority share.”
His dissent later became the basis for Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, which for the first time granted homosexuals federal constitutional protections.
It's worth recalling that President Ford named Stevens to the court in the wake of Watergate — another tense, partisan moment in our nation.
On the 30th anniversary of Justice Stevens’s appointment, Ford wrote that his appointee had “served his nation well, with dignity, intellect, and without partisan concerns.”
In our own polarized time, we're reminded that Justice Stevens’s North Star was fundamental fairness, the bedrock upon which our legal system stands.
Renny Fulco teaches public policy and law at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.
