Justice Stevens’s Record on Law Enforcement Issues

John Park / April 15, 2010

The argument that constitutionalists should not object if President Obama replaces a liberal justice with another liberal (for 30 more years?) is absurd for several reasons, including that such simple political labels don’t fit what most judges do. More to the point, while Justice Stevens’s decisions frequently disappointed those who understand that the original meaning of the Constitution is the only legitimate guide to its interpretation, there are some areas of law in which Justice Stevens departed from the more predictably activist views of Justices Brennan, Marshall, Souter and Ginsburg. My colleague highlighted Stevens’s important ruling in the voter ID case, and this post explores another vital area of law.

With respect to criminal law and procedure, Justice Stevens’s decisions were a mixed bag. He frequently ruled against the people’s interests with respect to death penalty and habeas corpus cases. Yet, at the arrest stage, Stevens wrote some notable opinions and cast votes in the search and seizure context that sided with law enforcement concerns and opposed justices who rarely saw a criminal defendant whose “rights” were not violated. (more…)