Stevens, John Paul (redirected from Recent Decisions)

Stevens, John Paul, 1920–, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1975–). After receiving his law degree from Northwestern Univ. (1947), he clerked with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Wiley Rutledge (1947–48). After many years of private practice in Chicago, he was named to the federal Court of Appeals in 1970. In 1975, President Ford named him to the U.S. Supreme Court. As a Justice, he was allied with neither the liberal nor the conservative wings of the court, maintaining a moderate and independent voting record. The replacement of liberal justices by more conservative appointees made Stevens one of the more liberal members of the court in the 1990s.

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Stevens, John Paul

(born April 20, 1920, Chicago, Ill., U.S.) U.S. jurist. He studied law at Northwestern University and clerked at the Supreme Court of the United States before joining a Chicago law firm, where he specialized in antitrust law while also teaching and serving on various public commissions. He was appointed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (1970) by Pres. Richard Nixon and to the Supreme Court by Pres. Gerald Ford (1975). Though initially perceived as a conservative, he proved to be a moderate liberal; indeed, as the court became more conservative in the 1980s and early '90s, after appointments by Pres. Ronald Reagan and Pres. George Bush, Stevens became perhaps the court's most liberal member.

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Stevens, John Paul (1920–  ) Supreme Court justice; born in Chicago. After several years in private practice, he was named by President Nixon to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit (1970–75). President Ford named him to the U.S. Supreme Court (1975) where he became known as a moderate.