Justice Stevens

How Appealing notes that Justice John Paul Stevens turns 83 today. Stevens has long been a mystery to me, and I've never really been able to create a coherent understanding of what he's done on the court in the last 28 years. Here's an interesting take:

Stevens has confounded prognosticators who thought they knew him as well as those who did not. Widely considered a 'sure swing vote' in the Court's center, he fairly rapidly proved to be found far more frequently with the 'liberal bloc,' increasingly so with the passing of time. His prorights or proindividual score has consistently been high. The women's rights group who opposed his nomination quickly began to hail him as both sensitive and free of preconceived notions. A 'gadfly to the brethren,' a personal loner, a legal maverick, he forever challenges his colleagues. Always well prepared and soft-spoken in his frequent colloquies with counsel in oral argument, he probes like a veritable explorer and is replete with novel legal theories. But he has not been a Court leader, and it is doubtful that he will become one. He has found it difficult to subsume his own ideas and interpretations to others in order to forge not only a numerically united front, but also one that is jurisprudentially in concord. He has written more dissenting and concurring opinions than any of his colleagues. To dissent, of course, is one thing; but to engage in the veritable flood of concurring opinions that have emanated from Stevens's pen is quite another - for they all too often muddy the constitutional law waters and lay themselves open to the charge that they are ego trips. Yet Stevens is patently a valuable addition to the Court. He is an unceasing stimulator of reflection, of innovation, of disciplined literateness, of cerebral combat in constitutional law, logic, and theory. And his gift for elegant, pungent, memorable expression will always grace the Court's annals.

I'm sure he's been the 5th vote on a number of issues, and thus influential in practical terms. Yet in legal terms, it's hard for me to see what he has really contributed. I don't think being an 'unceasing stimulator' of 'cerebral combat' is particularly valuable if you're arguing by yourself on the sidelines of all the major debates.