The Court, the Constitution and the Justice from Illinois

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens discussed his stance on several hot-button issues, the personal rapport justices have with one another and what drew him to the legal profession in a well-attended public discussion at Princeton University with Provost Christopher Eisgruber, Monday, Oct. 10.

At age 91, Stevens spoke fluently about the specifics of dozens of Supreme Court opinions, both recent and decades old, with Eisgruber, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Public Affairs in Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the University Center for Human Values, who served as a law clerk for Stevens from August 1989 to July 1990. Stevens retired from the Supreme Court in 2010 after serving as a justice for 34 terms, having written 1,400 opinions, roughly half of them dissents.

The event, titled "The Court, the Constitution and the Justice from Illinois: John Paul Stevens in Conversation with Provost Christopher Eisgruber," was held in a packed Richardson Auditorium in Alexander Hall. The Walter E. Edge Lecture and the John Marshall Harlan '20 Lecture in Constitutional Adjudication, it was presented by the Princeton University Public Lectures and the Program in Law and Public Affairs (LAPA).