A fantastic piece covering Justice Stevens in the Sunday Magazine. He's presented as a much more balanced character than some right/left pundits may have you think. The internal politics of the Supreme Court are always interesting. The article highlights, his important role as senior associate justice in assigning opinions (when not agreeing with the Chief).
The author notes the shift in mentality of liberal judges these days:
"Judicial liberalism... has largely become a conservative project: an effort to preserve the legal status quo in the face of efforts by a younger generation of conservatives to uproot the precedents of the past 40 years."
Interestingly, the article mentions the role of his own father's conviction for embezzlement, his own World War II experience, and his experiences clerking in forming his more expansive protections of individual liberty from government interference.
Also includes discussion of Roe v Wade, affirmative action, his role in Bill Clinton's impeachment saga, and finally a mention of his reasoning in Bush v Gore.
For fans of constitutional interpretation, here's his view:
Stevens’s final judicial theme is that the court has an obligation to protect ideals of equality and liberty in light of the nation’s entire history, rather than legalistically parsing the original understanding of the Constitution. As the court moved right during the past 20 years, Stevens increasingly saw it as his role to interpret the Constitution with fidelity to all of American history, rejecting the claim of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and Judge Robert Bork that the original understanding of the 18th-century framers is all that matters...“Originalism is perfectly sensible. I always try to figure out what the original intent was, but to say that’s the Bible and nothing else counts seems to me quite wrong.”
Finally, I like this quote:
Though no one has succeeded in reducing his vision to a simple label — “I like to have people think I’m a good lawyer, to tell you the truth,” Stevens said. “I’m not big on labels” — his legal thinking has returned repeatedly over the years to a set of identifiable ideas and themes.
The first is that the government has a duty to behave impartially, rather than favoring one group over another for partisan or sectarian reasons. “It seems to me that one of the overriding principles in running the country is the government ought to be neutral,” Stevens told me. “It has a very strong obligation to be impartial, and not use its power to advance political agendas or personal agendas.”
Sunday, September 23, 2007
NY Times profiles Justice John Paul Stevens
Electoral college changes: reforms yes, but not this way.
I'm all in favor of a review of the way that the Electoral college operates. It's an opaque system, one that most voters don't understand and doesn't match a lot of democratic ideals. It appears to some to be a hang over from a less democratic age where the voters couldn't be trusted to vote 'correctly' and had to be watched over (mind you, it also acts as part of a system of checks and balances). Just witness the confusion and frustration felt when President Bush won the election in 2000 based on a majority of the 538 electoral college votes, even though Gore won the popular vote - assuming the underlying count was correct (the actual point of contention), this outcome was never at question. Wikipedia does a good run-down, including pros and cons, here.
But what about this Republican led proposal [CNN] to change the system - for one state! This smacks of bad faith...
Essentially, whover wins the majority in that state gets the entire block of electroal college votes. California represents such a large block of votes that this can easily mean the difference between winning or losing an election. The proposal here is to 'free' California from the system
This is what upsets me about lawyers getting too involved in the political process.
If there is one thing that you learn in practice, it is the importance of advising your client - especially in the larger cases - that even though you can do something, often you should not. The point is to show some restraint and think of the future repercussions.
Quite often effective efforts to lobby and argue to overturn a law will benefit your client immediately, but in the long run will be tremendously damaging. Whether this is by way of reaction - either legal, legislative (political) or consumer based - or whether this is because your client finds the loophole used directly against them in future.
Regardless of the pros and cons of this reform, this should have been handled better...
