Word: stewart
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Stewart resigns, giving Reagan a first high court opening...
...year and a half ago, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart received a letter from a high school student in St. Cloud, Minn. The Justice had done well", wrote the young woman, but why had he stayed in the job so long? "That", recalled Stewart, 66, last week, "sort of started me thinking. His thinking led him and his wife Mary Ann to conclude that this term, his 23rd, should be his last. Last week, a month after Stewart had quietly deliverd a letter of resignation to President Reagan, he announced his decision. Not even his colleagues inside the court except...
...Stewart's retirement will round off a legal career that began virtually in infancy. As a child, Stewart would listen while his father, a Cincinnati lawyer and one-time mayor who would later serve on the Ohio Supreme Court, simultaneously shaved and rehearsed his courtroom arguments. Schooled at Hotchkiss, Yale and Yale Law School, he served as a deck officer on Navy oilers during World War II, "bored to death 99% of the time, and scared to death 1%." After three years of Wall Street he retired to Cincinnati. In 1954 Stewart was named to the U.S. Court...
Because the court was so evenly divided philsophically, the newcomer frequently found himself casting the decisive vote. A common expression in the press was " As goes Stewart, so goes the court." During the more liberal days of the Warren Court (1962-69), Stewart was often in the minority but with the passing of that era he again became what he remains today, a crucial swing man. As a centrist, Stewart has shrunk from formulating sweeping principles that would place him in one camp or another. Says Stanford Law Professor Gerald Gunther: " He's not going to be remembered...
...Stewart, a judge is supposed to decide only the specific case before him and to do so as narrowly as possible. A Justice, he said last week, should not "think of himself as some great big philosopher-king." He believes that social and economic issues should be left to legislators, even when they handle them poorly. He once derided a Connecticut anticontraceptive statute as an "uncommonly silly law"-and at the same time voted to uphold it. To some, this restraint betokened a lack of drive or leadership. Says one law professor: He was a real disappointment...