Noah Feldman, Columnist

Justice Stevens Was Brilliant, Modest and Unafraid of Change

The eventual leader of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court was a throwback to an earlier era.

July 17, 2019 at 12:15 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Many of his opinions stand the test of time.
Photographer: Allison Shelley/Getty Images

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The career of Justice John Paul Stevens, who died Tuesday at 99, stands as a reminder of the U.S. Supreme Court of an earlier era, when partisanship was rare, pragmatism reigned, and a moderate Republican like Stevens could evolve into one of the most important liberal justices of the post-World War II era.

Even at the height of Stevens’s influence in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when he had become the de facto leader of the court’s liberals, Stevens represented something of a throwback — a connection to a Supreme Court world only dimly remembered or read about in history books.