Justice Stevens spoke for me

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

You've got the liberal wing and the conservative wing and on most decisions that's all you need to know.

But Justice Stevens really spoke for me.

Assaults on expressive freedoms really made him mad.

During the primaries I wrote that a Stevens dissent was the most moving recent product of government I could think of.

At some point (before Stevens... Georgia v. somebody circa 1968) the court ruled that an individual could not be criminally liable for his library... that criminalizing *possession* of obscenity was unconstitutional. But for political reasons the court finessed the question of commerce in obscene material. (Over time it had made the antique concept of obscenity an absurdity but was never willing to follow the unavoidable logic of its own decisions, which was that all obscenity statutes were unconstitutional.)

In a later case the court upheld some anti porn-selling law while noting that the precedent right to possession remained unchanged.

Stevens' dissent started with (paraphrasing), "The majority has found here that a person is free to possess something he may not acquire..."

That makes me proud to be an American, and as a bonus it's snarky. It seems to echo Anatole France's famous sarcastic observation that "the law, in its majestic impartiality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges..."

Clear, righteously angry, apolitical and devoted to the Constitution as a coherent philosophy. If you are free to read it then you must be free to write it. And if you are free to write it then you are obviously free to publish it because 'freedom of the press' refers to the printing press.

And if you can publish it then obviously you can sell it because this is America, Goddammit... you get to sell the stuff you make here.

And if you are free to read it then you must be free to acquire it... no point glorying in your freedom to read materials you will never see.

It is an old style that was once not obviously left or right. Stevens was appointed by a Republican, after all. I was a philosophy of society reinforced in the context of the cold-war that detested the Orwellian. (Big Brother was Joe Stalin.) The idea of uniformed men poking through stores looking for banned publications was Soviet and clearly unacceptable.

In many ways Stevens is not a liberal as we think of it today. He is a libertarian, in the old and good meaning of the word before it became the province of people who just don't feel like paying their taxes. Liberal and libertarian were once related concepts. True Liberalism was, and remains, first and foremost a stance of reasoned skepticism of government. (When liberalism was invented the government was essentially monarchs and aristocrats. And liberalism fought fascism and communism-in-practice as just new kinds of monarchy.)

But that was then. And I doubt we will see another such libertarian-minded justice in my life-time.

We will have justices who would vote the same way on cases, but without that unique influence of Stevens clarity in majority or dissent.

So he will be missed. By me.

[mr715]

1. I'm liking you more and more.

Very well stated.

The Court really should be more judicial and less legislative. We are moving more and more towards an almost consular system where the Supreme Court gets to participate in legislative decisions.

But these things come in cycles. When Scalia and Thomas retire, we may see the Court move towards a less ideological approach. Sadly though, Stevens is one of a dying era.

[depakid]

2. He spoke for many- sometimes prophetically

“One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”