WASHINGTON, DC — John Paul Stevens, who served on the Supreme Court for more than three decades and became its leading liberal voice, has died. He was 99.
Stevens died Tuesday evening at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, due to complications following a stroke he suffered Monday, the Supreme Court’s public information office said in a news release. He died peacefully surrounded by his daughters.
President Gerald Ford appointed Stevens to the high court in 1975. He served more than 34 years on the court and retired in 2010.
Known as an independent-thinker, Stevens was known for fighting for peoples’ freedom and dignity, be it students, immigrants or prisoners. He supported limiting the death penalty, gay rights, racial equality and keeping abortion legal. He also advocated for protecting the rights of criminal suspects and unlawful immigrants facing deportation, The Associated Press reported, and even influenced fellow justices to give foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay the right to plead for their release in American courts.
Though he was considered a centrist at first, Stevens came to be seen as a leading liberal voice on the court — a label he rejected.
“I don’t think of myself as a liberal at all,” Stevens told The New York Times in 2007. “I think as part of my general politics, I’m pretty darn conservative.”
Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. said Stevens devoted his life to public service.
“He brought an inimitable blend of kindness, humility, wisdom, and independence,” Roberts said. “His unrelenting commitment to justice has left us a better nation.”
Stevens, who was born in Chicago on April 20, 1920, is survived by his children Elizabeth Jane Sesemann (Craig) and Susan Roberta Mullen (Kevin), as well as nine grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren. His first wife Elizabeth Jane, his second wife Maryan Mulholland, and his two children John Joseph and Kathryn preceded him in death.
Two years after serving in the U.S. Navy from 1942-45, Stevens served as a law clerk to Justice Wiley Rutledge. He was admitted to law practice in Illinois in 1949 before becoming associate counsel to a House Judiciary subcommittee that studied monopoly power. For two years beginning in 1953, Stevens was a member of the attorney general’s national committee to study anti-trust law.
In 1970, he became second vice president of the Chicago Bar Association and served as a federal appeals court judge.
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