Potter Stewart (January 23 1915 – December 7 1985) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Potter Stewart | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court | |
| In office October 14 1958 – July 3 1981 | |
| Nominated by | Dwight D. Eisenhower |
| Preceded by | Harold Hitz Burton |
| Succeeded by | Sandra Day O'Connor |
Education
Stewart was born in Jackson, Michigan while his family was on vacation. His father, James G. Stewart, a prominent Republican from Cincinnati, Ohio, served as Mayor of Cincinnati for seven years and was later a justice on the Ohio Supreme Court.
Stewart attended the Hotchkiss School, graduating in 1933. Then, he went on to Yale University, where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon and Skull and Bones graduating class of 1937. He was awarded Phi Beta Kappa and served as chairman of the student newspaper, The Yale Daily News. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1941, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal and a member of Phi Delta Phi. Other members of that era included Gerald R. Ford, Peter H. Dominick, Walter Lord, William Scranton, R. Sargent Shriver, Cyrus R. Vance, and Byron R. White. The last would later become his colleague on the Supreme Court.
Life experience
He served in World War II as a member of the US Navy Reserve aboard oil tankers.
In 1943, he married Mary Ann Bertles in a ceremony at Bruton Episcopal Church in Williamsburg, Virginia. His brother, Zeph Stewart (also an initiate of Delta Kappa Epsilon and Skull and Bones), was the best man. They eventually had a daughter, Harriet (Virkstis), and two sons, Potter, Jr. and David.
He was employed in private practice at the law firm of Dinsmore & Shohl, LLP in Cincinnati and at the age of 39, in 1954, he was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Supreme Court service
In 1958, President Eisenhower nominated Stewart to the Supreme Court to replace Justice Harold Hitz Burton, who was retiring.
Stewart was tempermentally inclined to moderate positions, but was often in a dissenting posture during his time on the Warren Court. Stewart believed that the majority on the Warren Court had adopted readings of the First Amendment Establishment Clause (Abington Township v. Schempp (1963)), the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination (Miranda v. Arizona (1965)), and Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of Equal Protection with regard to voting rights (Reynolds v. Sims (1964)) which went beyond the intention of the framers. Stewart dissented in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) on the ground that, while the Connecticut statute barring the use of contraceptives seemed to him an "uncommonly silly law," he could not find a general "Right of Privacy" in the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause.
Prior to the appointment of Warren Burger as Chief Justice, many speculated that President Richard Nixon would elevate Stewart to the post, some going so far as to call him the front-runner. Stewart, though flattered by the suggestion, did not want again to appear before--and expose his family to--the Senate confirmation process. Nor did he relish the prospect of taking on the administrative responsibilities delegated to the Chief Justice. Accordingly, he met privately with the president to ask that his name be removed from consideration.
On the Burger Court, Stewart was seen as a centrist justice and was often influential, joining the decision in Furman v. Georgia (1972) which invalidated all death penalty laws then in force, and then joining in the Court's decision four years later, Gregg v. Georgia, which upheld the revised capital punishment legislation adopted in a majority of the states. Despite his earlier dissent in Griswold, Stewart changed his views on the "Right of Privacy" and was a key mover behind the Court's decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), which recognized the right to abortion under the "Right of Privacy." Though Stewart was a lifelong Republican, he opposed the Vietnam War and on a number of occasions urged the Supreme Court to grant certiorari on cases challenging the constitutionality of the war.
He was the lone dissenter in the landmark juvenile law case In Re Gault (1967). That case extended to minors the right to be informed of rights and the right to an attorney, which had been granted to adults in Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) and Miranda v. Arizona (1966), respectively.
To the lay public, Stewart may be best known for a quotation, or a fragment thereof, from his opinion in the obscenity case of Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964). Stewart wrote in his short concurrence that "hard-core pornography" was hard to define, but that "I know it when I see it." Usually dropped from the quote is the remainder of that sentence, "and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." He later recanted this view in Miller v. California, in which he accepted that his prior view was simply untenable.
Stewart remained on the Court until his retirement in July 1981 at the age of 66. He was succeeded by Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court.
After his retirement, he appeared in a series of public television specials about the United States Constitution with Fred W. Friendly.
Stewart's personal and official papers are archived at the manuscript library of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. However, all files concerning Stewart's service are closed to researchers until all the justices with whom Stewart served have left the court. Thus, the files are expected to be made public following the departure from the court of Justice John Paul Stevens, who is the last sitting justice who served with Stewart.
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