The Leadership Legacy of Justice John Paul Stevens
Elon Journal of Leadership and the Law (online publication), Forthcoming
Republished Journal of Law, Vol. 2, (Journal of Legal Metrics, Vol. 1), No. 135, 2012
19 Pages Posted: 30 Mar 2011 Last revised: 4 Mar 2012
Date Written: October 21, 2011
Abstract
Commentators have recently praised Justice John Paul Stevens for his transformation from an independent and unpredictable jurist to a consensus builder and leader of the Supreme Court’s liberal bloc during his career on the Court. But is this narrative actually true?
Indeed, the data from Justice Stevens’s tenure on the Court tells a story of great influence, just not one involving building a consensus among his colleagues. This essay finds that statistics on the number and types of opinions Justice Stevens authored do not support the view that he “changed” at the midpoint, or any point, of his career. Instead, Justice Stevens remained highly idiosyncratic throughout his career, writing separate opinions at a rate dwarfing that of any other justice in the Court’s history. Those separate opinions also failed to attract high levels of support relative to the votes garnered by other justices’ separate opinions.
However, the numbers also show that Justice Stevens acted as an intellectual leader for generations of American scholars and jurists, if not necessarily among his peers on the Court. Indeed, Justice Stevens has been cited by name in over 10,000 federal court opinions since he began his judicial career on the Seventh Circuit, demonstrating that he has profoundly affected the development of federal law over the last forty years, even if he lacked the desire or ability to achieve high levels of consensus within the Court itself.
Keywords: John Paul Stevens, Justice Stevens, Supreme Court History, Dissent, Concurrence, Supreme Court Sluggers, statistics
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