Ed Levi's Friend Announces His Retirement

Justice John Paul Stevens' announcement today that he will retire at the end of this Supreme Court term brought to mind a conversation I had with former President Gerald Ford about Stevens in the mid-1980s. I had the honor to sit next to Ford at the right place and the right time: the end of the head table at a banquet of seemingly interminable length. Since Ford was on the very end of the row, I was his only immediate dinner conversationalist, thus making him captive to my questioning for most of the evening. David Frost I was not, but Ford good naturedly indulged me nonetheless.

After passing several minutes discussing the former President's early years, particularly those spent at Yale Law School (Did you know he coached the boxing and football teams as well as the cheerleaders?), there was a lull in the conversation. At that time President Reagan's appointments to the judiciary were in the news -- remember the days of Judge Bork? -- and all the talk was that Attorney General Meese and the Reagan White House were laser focused on finding judges who would not be activists. With this in mind, I asked President Ford what criteria he had used to decide on his only appointment to the Supreme Court -- Justice Stevens. Ford replied simply: "None, other than that Attorney General Levi wanted him."

Apparently Stevens made the jump from Seventh Circuit judge to the nation's highest court because he was in the right place at the right time: both he and Edward Levi (former University of Chicago president) were friends from Chicago. Obviously Stevens had excelled as both a lawyer and jurist and was well qualified, but Ford's response made clear to me just how detached he had been during the Supreme Court Justice selection process. The result was a Supreme Court Justice who is one of the most liberal members of the Court and who, though appointed by a Republican, chose to wait until a Democrat was President before retiring from office. Don't count on President Obama following the same disengaged approach in choosing Justice Stevens' successor.