Talk:John Paul Stevens

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John Paul Stevens was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Reviewed version: February 14, 2007
To-do list for John Paul Stevens: edit · history · watch · refresh

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Contents

[edit] Jurist Deleted

I think that is pretty obvious given his title. I took the libral nature of deleting it. If you all feel it necessary to put it back, go right ahead.

[edit] Segal-Cover score

The scale goes from 0 (most conservative) to 1 (most liberal). How does he manage to have a negative score? I'm going to change it to the 0.250 that the document found on the S-C score says.

--Minor point, but the article refers to Justice Stevens as having the second highest S-C score of the current incumbent Justices the court. To my knowledge this is inaccurate as Justices Breyer, Kennedy and Souter all have higher S-C scores. This should probably be removed.

I agree. I wish you would have signed your comment, though. The article says that he has the second-highest S-C score, but the link shows that his S-C is squarely in the middle -- below Ginsburg, Breyer, Souter, and even Kennedy. Unless there is an objection, I'm changing it in a week.Tony 14:55, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
As there were no comments, I corrected the S-C score sentence.Tony 14:16, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] died?

well he hasn't died yet. i think the died tag is a bit preemptive. -Nosaj56 01:35, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] More Info on Legal Philosophy

I was hoping someone might be able to include more info on his legal philosophy. Scalia and some of the others are a little more well done. --Jaysscholar 00:49, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Current Event?

Aside from the fact that if John Roberts isn't confirmed by October, making him acting Chief, why is Justice Stevens marked as a current event?

removed --69.94.194.3 20:02, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Stevens and affirmative action

I made two slight edits to the discussion of Stevens's views on affirmative action. First, I don't know whether it is correct that Stevens was once the Court's "most" impassioned critic of affirmative action. Rehnquist and Stewart were pretty impassioned as well. I altered the discussion to state that he was "an" impassioned critic. Second, the discussion stated that Stevens compared the minority set aside in Fullilove to Nazi race laws, which is a little misleading. His reference to Nazi race laws appears in a footnote to his dissent in Fullilove, and it isn't a comparison in the sense of claiming that the set aside program was the same as Nazi race laws.

[edit] Babe Ruth

Stated in an on-air interview during a Chicago Cubs baseball game that as a child he was in Wrigley Field with his father when Babe Ruth called a World Series home run. Can anyone find a transcript or back this up?

Well, I can't, but this is an interesting read: [1]. --ZekeMacNeil 17:14, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ashcroft v. ACLU

Ashcroft v. ACLU mentioned in this article does not relate to regulating virtual child pornography, but rather the measures set up to restrict access of minors to online pornography. http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-218.ZS.html

Yeah, you're right. It's Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition [2]. I'll go fix it now. --zenohockey 16:18, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Steven's health

I have read several recent mentions that Steven's health has taken "a turn for the worse" this year (these mentions are in the numerous Miers related articles of this week). He is 85 and we seem to know nothing about the state of his health. I don't trust the vague references above (may be wishful thinking by those who want him off the court), but we should have a health section for Stevens in this article, with information about his past cancer situation, and his current health. Does anyone know where we can find this information from a reliable source? NoSeptember 20:27, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Segal-Cover score

If the article is to discuss Stevens' Segal-Cover score, we should have an article describing what that score represents and how it is derived. BD2412 T 17:41, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I added an article explaining what they are. I have a busy week, but when the semester is over and I've finished grading I'll expand the Segal-Cover scores article and update all the post-war justices with their scores. -User: Vincent Vecera

  • Brilliantly done - many thanks. BD2412 T 18:55, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Huh?

"A transformed lagged behavior measure places him as more liberal." I don't know what that means. Trojanpony 00:26, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ann Coulter

The Ann Coulter reference to poisoning him seems unnecessary. It seems more intended to demonstrate that conservative critics of Justice Stevens are all as batty as Coulter. I don't see how it contributes to the article in any meaningful way. I'm taking it out.

As much as I think Coulter is a jackass, I agree that her moronic wordslinking does not deserve mention. (Has no one considered that in the event of the assassination of a justice, the President would me morally and politically bound to replace him or her with someone of similar judicial ideology, so as to set a rule that would prevent politically-inspired assassination?)Vincent Vecera 18:57, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Not all Presidents are constrained by your imagined bindings. -- 71.102.136.107 23:16, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stevens retirement speculation

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/2/1/210351.shtml?s=lh

I thought this was relevant, particularly this paragraph: "Stevens has not made any formal announcement regarding his retirement, nor is he known to be in poor health. But he is 85 years old, and rumor has it that he hopes to have his replacement named by a Republican president."

I've heard rumor (through the ex-clerk mill) that the opposite is true, that he is hostile to the thought of a Republican replacing him. He still plays tennis and is in extremely good health for an 85 year old man. I'd not be at all surprised to see him on the Court for another five years. Finally, newsmax is a notoriously unreliable (and ultra-biased) source. Vincent Vecera 18:57, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. I thought I'd heard it somewhere else too but I can't recall what the source was.--Hbutterfly 21:00, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Note: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. served until he turned 90, and that was long before the advent of much modern medical knowledge. BD2412 T 00:07, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Stevens will probably stay as long as he can... he has shown that trait (right now, he is 86). In addition, Newsmax is extremely un-credible and biased and I do wonder whether Stevens would care whether his replacement was a Democrat or Republican, since he has also shown he does not care for and is largely not partisan and the current state of American political affairs being quite partisan. Lastly, there are always rumors about nearly everything under the sun! ~ clearthought 20:05, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Reports from former clerks don't strike me as particularly strong evidence that Stevens will retire before the 2006 election, just as unsubstantiated reports about his hiring clerks through October Term 2007 don't strike me as particularly strong evidence the other way. Can someone provide better evidence one way or the other? Otherwise, maybe we should delete these statements. ---Axios023 03:38, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

"rumor has it"? Wikipedia is a not a vehicle for rumor mongering. -- 71.102.136.107 23:19, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] More recent photograph?

It appears to me that the current main photo is about 10 years old or so. Perhaps a more recent picture would be acceptable? http://www.supremecourthistory.org/02_history/subs_current/images_b/003.html Neal2028 18:07, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Failed GA

Not enough references. —Disavian (talk/contribs) 22:47, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Oldest ever?

Is he the oldest serving Justice ever? Dogru144 09:22, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

PS, he's served to an older age than Justices Brennan or Marshall. Dogru144 09:25, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
No. I believe that was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. who retired from the Court at age 90. Stevens is not quite that old. Yet. --Pjb dinky 01:01, 9 August 2007 (UTC)Pjb_dinky

[edit] Re-considering 1st paragraph edit?

I don't understand the reasons for Sjrplscjnky's recent edit of this article -- not that I'm sure that the data are necessarily "wrong." Rather, I'm persuaded that the strategy of introducing academic honors in the first paragraph is an unhelpful approach to this specific subject. I note that articles about other sitting Justices have been similarly "enhanced;" and I also believe those changes are no improvement.

In support of my view that this edit should be reverted, I would invite anyone to re-visit articles written about the following pairs of jurists.

The question becomes: Would the current version of the Wikipedia article about any one of them -- or either pair -- be improved by academic credentials in the introductory paragraph? I think not.

Perhaps it helps to repeat a wry argument Kathleen Sullivan of Stanford Law makes when she suggests that some on the Harvard Law faculty wonder how Antonin Scalia avoided learning what others have managed to grasp about the processes of judging? I would hope this anecdote gently illustrates the point.

Less humorous, but an even stronger argument is the one Clarence Thomas makes when he mentions wanting to return his law degree to Yale.

At a minimum, I'm questioning this edit? It deserves to be reconsidered. --Ooperhoofd (talk) 01:10, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GPA

The source given doesn't mention that he had the highest GPA in the history of the law school. Foundmine (talk) 20:47, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it does, on page 3: "Returning from the war in 1945, Stevens thought of becoming a high-school English teacher, like his mother, but instead was persuaded by his brother to enroll at Northwestern University Law School on the G.I. Bill. Two years later, he graduated first in his class, with the highest grade-point average in the history of the school." Crazyale (talk) 09:05, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Drug Legalization?

Why was Justice Stevens added to the "Americans Favoring Drug Legalization" Category? I'm going to delete this if whoever added this cannot provide a source.Crazyale (talk) 22:29, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

In one fairly recent opinion that was about marijuana he did express the opinion that the prohibition of marijuana was analogous to the prohibition of alcohol in his youth, and that it too should be repealed. I don't remember the name but should be easy to look up. I don't think he has said anything that would indicate a wish to legalize all drugs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.229.231.115 (talk) 17:57, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
The case was Morse v Frederick 2007. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.229.231.115 (talk) 18:18, 8 May 2008 (UTC)