I didn't cherry-pick, so there's some good there. But a
of authoritarian crap, too.
From the start, Stevens evinced a concern that the legal system give particular care to ensure the rights of the underprivileged, including Aliens, illegitimate children, and prisoners. However, Stevens cannot easily be classified as either a judicial liberal or a conservative. In a judicial context, a conservative judge generally will not decide issues that he or she believes are within the province of legislatures. Moreover, a conservative typically votes to enhance government power in a conflict between government interests and individual rights. A judicial liberal, on the other hand, tends to favor individual interests and will look beyond the bounds of a statute and past interpretations of the Constitution to decide social policy questions.
For example, although Stevens is generally perceived as being sympathetic to the rights of prisoners, his sympathy has not necessarily translated into leniency for criminal defendants. Stevens wrote the opinion in United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 102 S. Ct. 2157, 72 L. Ed. 2d 572 (1982), wherein the Court held that police may search compartments and containers within a vehicle even though the contents are not in plain view, as long as the search is based on Probable Cause. Probable cause, the same standard needed to obtain a Search Warrant, is typically determined by a magistrate, but this case effectively gave that power to the police in searches of vehicle containers.
Stevens's nomination was opposed by some women's groups that claimed that he was unresponsive in several sexual discrimination cases while on the court of appeals. In 1981 he voted to uphold the all-male draft (rostker v. goldberg, 453 U.S. 57, 101 S. Ct. 2646, 69 L. Ed. 2d 478), and in another case he declined to consider the theory of Comparable Worth. On the other hand, he has typically voted to uphold roe v. wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147 (1973), and limit restrictions to a woman's right to Abortion (Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 510 U.S. 1309, 114 S. Ct. 909, 127 L. Ed. 2d 352 <1994> and Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 111 S. Ct. 1759, 114 L. Ed. 2d 233 <1991>). In Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681, 117 S. Ct. 1636, 137 L. Ed. 2d 945 (1997), Stevens spoke for a unanimous Court in allowing a Sexual Harassment lawsuit against President bill clinton to go forward. Stevens ruled that the Constitution does not afford a president temporary immunity—except in the most exceptional circumstances—for civil litigation arising from events that occurred before the president took office. The Court also held that Clinton was not entitled to a stay of proceedings during his term in office.
One of Stevens's earliest opinions was Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc., 427 U.S. 50, 96 S. Ct. 2440, 49 L. Ed. 2d 310, (1976). He wrote for a plurality of the Court, upholding Detroit Zoning ordinances that prevented the concentration of "adult" establishments. The case was significant because the ordinance in question did not require a finding that the establishment dealt in legally obscene materials as a prerequisite to legal action. Before the ruling in Young, sexually-oriented material that was not legally obscene appeared to be entitled to complete First Amendment protection. Stevens wrote that the material in question was so sexually explicit as to be entitled to less protection than other speech, stating that "few of us would march our sons and daughters off to war to preserve the citizen's right to see 'Specified Sexual Activities' exhibited in the theaters of our choice." He reasoned that the zoning restriction
did not totally prohibit the availability of the material and was a reasonable action by the city to further its interest in preserving the quality of urban life. This ruling has been the basis for other restrictions that fall short of an outright prohibition of communication that is sexually explicit but not obscene.
Justice Stevens, along with Justices Potter Stewart and lewis f. powell jr., acted as a swing vote in a series of death penalty cases in the mid-1970s. The Court upheld death penalty statutes providing for discretion in imposition but overturned those calling for mandatory death sentences. Stevens voted against the death penalty in cases of rape and dissented from a 1989 decision permitting an execution for someone who committed a murder at age sixteen or seventeen.
In Eichman v. United States, 496 U.S. 310, 110 S. Ct. 2404, 110 L. Ed. 2d 287 (1990), the Supreme Court ruled that flag burning was a form of expression protected by the First Amendment and overturned a federal statute that attempted to protect flags. The majority ruled that the statute had to withstand the most exacting scrutiny and could not be upheld under the First Amendment. Stevens wrote a dissent joined by conservative Chief Justice william h. rehnquist and two other justices, maintaining that the statute was consistent with the First Amendment.
Stevens wrote the opinion in BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore, 517 U.S. 559, 116 S. Ct. 1589, 134 L. Ed. 2d 809 (1996), the first case in which the High Court overturned a jury's Punitive Damages award. A jury awarded an automobile owner $4 million (later reduced to $2 million) when the manufacturer failed to disclose a refinished paint job on a new BMW. Stevens called the award "grossly excessive" and set out criteria to determine the propriety of punitive damage awards. The four dissenting justices in the case argued that the ruling improperly intruded into states' prerogatives.
In 1992 Stevens wrote the opinion for Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., 505 U.S. 504, 112 S. Ct. 2608, 120 L. Ed. 2d 407 (1992), possibly exposing the tobacco industry to huge adverse verdicts for money damages by opening the door to increased litigation for smoking-related deaths. In a 7–2 decision, the Court ruled that cigarette manufacturers that lie about the dangers of smoking or otherwise misrepresent their products can be sued under state laws. Because cigarette labeling is governed by federal law, at issue was whether federal law preempts state common-law liability lawsuits. The Court ruled that federal suits are the only avenue for pursuing failure-to-warn cases or claims of omissions in the manufacturer's advertising or promotions. Litigants may sue in state court, however, for claims of breaches of express warranties, claims that cigarette advertisements are fraudulent, and claims that a company hid the dangers of smoking from state authorities or conspired to mislead smokers.
Stevens also authored wallace v. jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 105 S. Ct. 2479, 86 L. Ed. 2d 29 (1985), holding that a state cannot provide a moment of silence at the beginning of the school day for the express purpose of facilitating meditation or prayer. The Court held that the Alabama statute in question did not pass constitutional scrutiny.
Recent Decisions
Over the last eight years, Stevens's opinions have continued to cross the political spectrum, despite the tendency for observers to cast him as one of the "liberal" justices. In Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 122 S. Ct. 2508, 153 L. Ed. 2d 666 (2002), Stevens wrote a 6–3 majority opinion ruling that a prison inmate had been subjected to Cruel and Unusual Punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment when prison guards handcuffed him to a hitching post as punishment for disruptive behavior, even though the inmate had already been subdued. Stevens said that the prison guards knowingly subjected the inmate to a substantial risk of physical harm, to unnecessary pain caused by the handcuffs, to unnecessary exposure to the heat of the sun, to prolonged thirst and taunting, and to a deprivation of bathroom breaks that created a risk of particular discomfort and humiliation.
That same year Stevens also wrote a 6–3 majority opinion ruling that the execution of mentally retarded criminals violates the Eighth Amendment's guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment. atkins v. virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 122 S. Ct. 2242, 153 L. Ed. 2d 335 (2002). Citing "evolving standards of decency," Stevens said that his decision was informed by the consensus reflected in deliberations of the American public, legislators, scholars, and judges that have taken place over the thirteen years since Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 109 S. Ct. 2934, 106 L. Ed. 2d 256 (1989). In Penry, the Supreme Court held that two state statutes prohibiting the execution of the mentally retarded, even when added to the fourteen states that had rejected Capital Punishment completely, did not provide sufficient evidence of a national consensus. In Atkins, though, Stevens emphasized that sixteen additional states had passed laws barring execution of the mentally retarded since the Penry decision was handed down.
Stevens surprised many observers with his dissenting opinion in Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 121 S. Ct. 2038, 150 L. Ed. 2d 94 (2001), where five justices found that the use of a thermal-imaging device aimed at a private home from a public street to detect relative amounts of heat within the home constituted a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and thus the use of that device was presumptively unreasonable without a warrant. Justice Stevens argued that thermal imaging did not constitute a Fourth Amendment search because it detected only heat radiating from the external surface of the house.
Stevens surprised no one with his dissenting opinion in Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, 121 S. Ct. 525, 148 L. Ed. 2d 388 (2000), however, where seven justices concluded that the process devised by the Florida Supreme Court to recount the popular vote in the 2000 presidential election violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Only five justices agreed that there was insufficient time to fashion a remedy that would fairly and lawfully allow the votes of Florida residents to be accurately counted for either presidential candidate. As a result, the nation's high court effectively ordered the Florida recount to stop, which meant that george w. bush would become the forty-third president of the United States.
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Stevens argued that the Equal Protection Clause does not limit the states' power to design their electoral processes—including substantive standards for determining whether a vote had been legally cast. Consequently, Stevens believed that the U.S. Supreme Court should have deferred to the Florida Supreme Court's interpretation of those standards and allowed the recount to continue. Under the majority's own reasoning, Stevens wrote, the appropriate course of action would have been to remand the case so the Florida high court could establish more specific procedures for implementing the legislature's uniform general standard of "voter intent." But in "the interest of finality," Stevens continued, "the majority effectively orders the disenfranchisement of an unknown number of voters whose ballots reveal their intent—and are therefore legal votes under state law—but were for some reason rejected by ballot-counting machines.
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