Stevens, John Paul (1920–) (Update 2)

• Author: Christopher L. Eisgruber
• Pages: 2537-2539

Page 2537

With Justice HARRY A. BLACKMUN'S retirement in 1994, Justice John Paul Stevens became the Supreme Court's second-most senior Justice, having served longer than any active member except Chief Justice WILLIAM H. REHNQUIST. Stevens accordingly acquired the power to assign the Court's opinion or the principal dissent whenever he and Rehnquist were on opposite sides?which was not unusual in controversial cases.

Stevens soon made use of this prerogative. He wrote the majority opinion in U.S. Term Limits v. Thorton (1995). Stevens concluded that neither Congress nor the states could impose TERM LIMITS upon federal legislators. Much of his argument dwelled upon the ORIGINAL INTENT of the Framers. It is ironic that Stevens's first major statement as the Court's senior Associate Justice focused so heavily on the Framers. Originalist reasoning had not been especially prominent in Stevens's earlier opinions, and it seems an implausible foundation for his jurisprudence.

Yet, if Stevens's methodology in U.S. Term Limits was atypical, the principles he announced were paradigmatic of his approach. Stevens insisted on two points. First, he maintained that although "Members of Congress are chosen by separate consituencies, ? they become, when elected, servants of the people of the United States." That position is consistent with Stevens's usual attitude toward FEDERALISM questions. He has never been especially friendly to claims of state SOVEREIGNTY.

Stevens's second key point in U.S. Term Limits provides a window on the foundations of his constitutional thought. He argued that the Constitution incorporates "an egalitarian ideal?that election to the National legislature should be open to all people of merit." Not everybody would describe this ideal as "egalitarian." Some popular conceptions of equality convert it into a leveling principle, under which all distinctions, including those supposedly based on "merit," are inherently suspect. For Stevens, though, equality presupposes neither sameness nor moral relativism. Equality entails instead the right to be held accountable as an individual for one's choices and actions. It is, in short, a right to be judged "on the merits," instead of on the basis of status, stereotypes, special privileges, or personal connections.

This idea reverberates through diverse branches of Stevens's jurisprudence. One can detect it in, for example, his views about the legal IMMUNITY OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS :hehas looked skeptically on claims that public entities or persons should, by virtue of their status or importance, be exempt from the legal...