Digital Commons @ Georgia Law Press Releases, Media Mentions, Graduates in the Media Archives News & Faculty Highlights 7-1-2011 07/2011 Newsclippings Office ofomm C unications and Public Relations Recommended Citation Office of Communications and Public Relations, "07/2011 Newsclippings" (2011). Media Archives. 12. https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/media_archives/12 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Press Releases, Media Mentions, Graduates in the News & Faculty Highlights at Digital Commons @ Georgia Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Media Archives by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Georgia Law. Please share how you have benefited from this access For more information, please contact [email protected]. Lexi sNexis(R) Email Request (2828:296327947) July, 2011 9'/ A. B.A. J . 20 A511 LENGTH : 1326 wo rds SECTJON: Supreme Court Report TITL I;: : Second Lives : for t hese f ormer. 'jusllces, retirement is no da y at the beach AU'l'IIOR: Mark Walsh TEXT : WHEN JUST I CE JOHN P.AUL STEVI~ NS s tepped down f rom t he U. S . Supreme Court last year, it marked the first Lime in 12 years thDt there have been at l east three r~t i r ed justices. And going hack t o 199~ , when Justice Harry A. Blackmun r e t i red, there began a period o [ a l i ttle mo re than a yea r when [ivc e x - j ustices were stil l puttering around- - former Cl1ief Jus t i ce Warren E. Burger, and fo rmer Justices Lewis F. Powell Jr., William J . Urennan Jr . and Byron R. WhiLe . Hut with a few except i ons , t hose j ustices we re l argely out of the spot l i ght in reti rement. For the three current ex-justices, retirement has seen little in the way of shuffleboard, Mah jong or Caribbean cruises . I nstead, Justices Sandra Day O' Conno r, Da vid H. Souter and Stevens have been rewriti ng the book o n ret irement purs ui ts and e xpectations. " Until now the re wa sn' t much post-judicial behavior" for reti r ed justices , says Linda Greenhouse , who covered the Supreme Court for t he New York Ti mes for some 30 years and is now a senior research scholar and Lecturer a t Ya le Law Scr1ool . " Those who weren ' t carried out were pre tty old a nd debilitated by the tim~ t hey left the court . Now we have th.is unusua l colle ction of e nergetic, very engaged indi viduals." BHI::AKING 'I'HE MOLD Or TH E 1 0 3 FORMER JUSTICES, 49 REMA J NED ON TilE court until they died, and many left :n poor hea lth, Greenhouse notes . Olhers l eft for s pecific reasons . John Jay, r.he first ch ict justice , once cal l e d the pos t " i ntol erable)" and r.a n f or governor of New York . Pr e si dent Lyndon B. Johnson t a l ked JusLJce Arthur J . Goldberg into lea ving the court in 1965 to become United Nations a mbassador . Burger s tepped down after 1 / years to J ead the b i cent ennial ot the U. S . Const itut ion . BUL few can recal 1 such a n outspoken t rio as these . For Stevens, 91 , a tw~-we ek pe r i od in May was emblematic . I n a May 2 speech in New York City, he critici z ed hJs ex-colle a gues for overturning a d amages awa rd for a man who spent 14 ye ars on death row because prosecutors fai led to turn over exculpatory evidence in a murder case . Referring t o a March 29 concu r rence by Justice Antonln Sca l ia in Connick v . Thompson, Stevens s aid, " Justice Sca lia has either overlooked or chosen to ignore the fact tha t. bad tajth , knowing violations" of a rule requlrinq s uch d isclosures ot evi dence "may b e caused by improper superv i s i on" i n a prosecuto r 's off.icc . The nexL da y, in another speech, the retired j ustice sai d he woul d have joined the l one dissent or Just ice Samuel A. Ali~o Jr . i n Snyder v . Phelps, where the court held t hat t he First Amendment shields members o r the We s tboro 2 ofS 7/ 18/201 I 9:45AM LexisNcxis(R) Emai l Request (2828:296327947) Baptist Church [rom tort liability for pjcke t inq t he funeral of an America n s erviceman . "It miqht interest you to know Lhat if I wer.e s till a n actjve justice, I would ha ve jo.i ned [AU to's) powe rful d i ssent," sa i d Stevens . " To borrow Sam' s phrase, the Fi r sL Ame ndment d oes not t r-cmsfonn sol emn o ccasions J i ke funerals into ' free-fi re zones.' " J u sL a few days later·, o n May 12 , St e ve ns we ighed in on the U.S . miss ion that ki l l ed Osama bin Laden . Speaking at a symposium a t Northwester n Un i versity Law School about h is 35- year Lenure , Steve ns noted t ha t t here had been " some d ebate about t he prop riety " o f the ki l l ing of bin Lade n by U. S. Navy Seal s. "I mu s t say I wa s proud or the Sea ls," sai d Stevens, a Na vy codebrea ke r d uri n g WorL d War I I and the last veteran of t h a t wa r t o s erve on Ll1e h i gh court. "It was nol merely to do j ustice and a venge Sept . 11 .... I t was to remove an enemy who had been trying every day to attack lhe United SLates ." " It seems clear t hat Justice Stevens wants to speak out o n issues that are qui t e imp ortant to h im," says Univfrslty o f C(.org .. a School of Law professor Diane Ma r ie Amann, a f orme r Steve ns c l e rk . "What ' s r('rnarkable i s that he has been spe aking t o groups that he never spoke to [while serving on t he court ] , and he ' s been putti ng together remarks that have been tailored to Lhe i nLcre s ts o f tha t g r oup." She no tes t hat b esides his s p e ecl1es, which included one l ast fall addr essing the inte rnment of J a panese - Ame ricans d~ rin q World War I I, Stevens i s comp leli nq a b oo k abo ut t he fiv e c h i ef justices he has known ellher as a l a w c l erk o r a s a iustlcc. Stevens Lold au thor n ill Ba rnhart i. n a recent interview i n The Atlantic t hat he had no desire to l inger on t he court beyond h is phys ical prime . Stevens recounte d that he h a d secretly a sked Souter a [ew years ago t o tell him when i t was t ime to g o . Wh en Souter reti red in 2009 , •• r knew r d i dn 't h ave any safely v <:t lve anymo r·e, " S t e vens said in the i n tcrview, addj ng that he decided he would retire (a t ter m ' s end) the day in January 2010 when h e fa l ter ed in delive ring h is d issent from Lhe bench in t h e campa ign- f i na nce case Citizens Un i ted v . Federal E l ection Commission . O' Connor, 81 , h as been a ctive i n a r1umbe r of causes s ince she left t he bench in early 2 0 06, no tabl y h er campaigns Jn favor o f merit s election o f state cou rt j udges and work to improve civic educa tion . O ' Connor, who tra vels a nd s peaks fre quently at a wide varie ty o f events, has s ometimes ma de t art c omments on i ssues of Lh e d a y . La s t year, at a s ymp os ium at t h e College o f Wil l i a m & Mary law schoo l , O 'Connor sai d s he reqretted tha t some of h e r deci s ions on a bo r tion rights , c ampa i gn f i nance a nd race-conscious government p olicies were " b e ing d i smantle d " by Lh e current court . " vlhat woul d you feel? " O ' Connor was quoted in USA Today . " 1 ' d be a l i ttle b iL di sappointed . lf you thin k you ' ve been he lpful a nd Lh cn iL 's d iSrn<:tntJ e d , yo u t h i nk, ' Oh , dear. ' BtJt life qoes on . I t' s not a lways posit'ive ." Souter, who r etired in 2009 a nd will turn 72 in September , is less vis i ble Lh a n his f elJow ex- j ustices .