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Justice Stevens Discusses His Life and Career at
HaroldWashington Library
I
n June, the CBA hosted a special pro-
gram featuring retired Supreme Court
Justice John Paul Stevens, who travelled
to Chicago to sit for an intimate conversa-
tion about his extraordinary life and career,
his judicial legacy, and the most significant
decisions issued by the Supreme Court in
recent years. Judge Ann C. Williams of
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh
Circuit moderated the program, which was
held at the Harold Washington Library
before a large audience that included
state and federal judges, several of Justice
Stevens’s former law clerks, and members
of his family.
Justice Stevens, who celebrated his 95th
birthday in April, served on the Supreme
Court from December of 1975, until his
retirement in 2010. At the time of his
retirement, he was the third longest-serving
Supreme Court Justice in the nation’s his-
tory and had authored more than 1400
opinions, nearly half of which were dis-
sents. Asked by Judge Williams about his
propensity for writing dissenting opinions,
Justice Stevens claimed that he felt obli-
gated to the public to explain the reasons
for his disagreement with the Court’s
majority. Certainly in his final years on the
Court, Justice Stevens received widespread
national attention for his strong dissents in
several highly controversial cases, including
Bush v. Gore
;
District of Columbia v. Heller
,
in which the Court ruled that the Second
By William A. Zolla
Editorial Board Member
Amendment protects an individual‘s right
to own guns; and
Citizens United v. FEC,
which struck down restrictions on cam-
paign spending by corporations.
Over the course of the program, Judge
Williams engaged with Justice Stevens in a
wide-ranging discussion about the seminal
moments in his life, while also exploring
how his personal history influenced his work
and philosophy as a Supreme Court justice.
Born in 1920 into a prominent Chi-
cago family, Justice Stevens grew up in
Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, where
he attended the University of Chicago Lab
School. In 1927, Justice Stevens’s father
built the Stevens Hotel, now the Hilton
Chicago, which at the time was the largest
hotel in the world. Through his father’s
hotel, Justice Stevens met numerous
celebrities of the era, including Charles
Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. He also
learned difficult, lasting, lessons when his
family lost much of its wealth during the
Great Depression. Among other childhood
memories, Justice Stevens vividly recalls
witnessing Franklin D. Roosevelt accepting
the nomination for president at the 1932
Democratic National Convention at the
Chicago Stadium, and seeing Babe Ruth
hit his famous “called shot” home run
at Wrigley Field during the 1932 World
Series.
Justice Stevens earned his undergraduate
degree in English from the University of
Chicago in 1941, and then enlisted in the
Navy, where he served as an intelligence
officer duringWorldWar II. Following the
war, Justice Stevens attended law school at
Northwestern, where he graduated
magna
cum laude
in 1947 with the highest grade
point average ever recorded. After earning
a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice
Wiley Rutledge, Justice Stevens returned
to Illinois, where he developed a highly
successful private legal practice during the
1950s and 60s.
SeventhCircuit Court of Appeals Judge AnnC.Williams interviewed Justice Stevens andmoderated
the program, which was held at the Harold Washington Library. Photo by Bill Richert.
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JULY/AUGUST 2015
continued on page 56