Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was born on January 23, 1915 and died on December 7, 1985. He served 22 years, 8 months, and 19 days as a supreme court judge. Stewart was a republican and was nominated a president Eisenhower. Stewart was the son of the Republican mayor of Cincinnati, so he was raised on politics. Though his background was ideologically conservative, Stewart was often cast as a centrist on the Court. Often he would vote with liberal justices on First Amendment issues and then side with conservative justices on matters of equal protection.
Stewart was born in Jackson, Michigan while his family was on vacation. His father, James G. Stewart, was a prominent Republican from Cincinnati Ohio. His father served as Mayor of Cincinnati for seven years and was later a judge on the Ohio Supreme Court.1
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. Here he was elected to 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 Beta Kappa. Stewart’s first interaction with law was when he first began to work in a New York law firm.
His actual legal career had begun when the United States entered World War II, at that time he served as an officer in the Navy and on occasion Stewart performed legal services in courts-martial. Soon after the War Stewart practiced law in New York, however during his short study in New York Stewart returned to Cincinnati and joined a law firm there to continue his practice. Potter practiced law in Cincinnati until 1954. After his yield in law he was elected to the City Counsel twice and served as Vice Mayor from, 1952 to 1953. 2
The Essay on Business Law Court Paper Assignment
On November 5, 2008, I came to observe a proceeding in the King County Superior Court where the judge’s name was Shaffer Catherine. I did observe the closing arguments and the jury’s motion to the case in a criminal proceeding where subject of the case was assault in the second degree. Mark Alan Bell, as the defendant in the observed case, was charged with second degree assault for punching a man ...
In 1943, he married Mary Ann Bertles in a ceremony at Bruton Episcopal Church in Williamsburg Virginia. They eventually had a daughter, Harriet, and two sons, Potter, Jr. and David.
Potter Stewart was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in 1954 by Dwight D. Eisenhower. Stewart then served for four years. Potter joined the Supreme Court at the age of forty- three, he is one of the youngest men to join the Supreme Court. Potter’s vote was seventy, for, and seventeen, against. Potter left the Supreme Court in 1981, due to his reason of his age being an issue, after twenty- three years of service. Stewart was succeeded by the conservative O’Connor.
Potter Stewart is an example of a justice, who wished to leave the Court before their performance begins to decline. Stewart retired in 1981. He was sixty-six years young, still healthy and vigorous, and after his retirement, he began a busy round of activities that included service on presidential commissions and as a visiting university scholar. In explaining his retirement, he stated, “I’ve always been a firm believer in the principle that it’s better to go too soon than to stay too long.”3
When Justice Stewart joined an ideologically split Court in 1958, he was reportedly “wooed” by the competing factions “in much the manner of an uncommitted delegate at a political convention”4 For the most part, a Justice who begins as a liberal
generally remains a liberal. Sometimes a Justice’s relative position on the Court will change because the Court’s Ideological center of perceptions changes. Justice Stewart moved toward the liberal side of the Court in the 1970s as new appointments made the Court as a whole more conservative. This shift however did not represent a fundamental change in Stewart’s own views.
The Essay on Federal Courts 1983 Monroe State
In response to The Civil War Congress enacted The Civil Rights Act of 1871 subsequently known as 42 USC SS 1983. Section 1983, applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, provides a civil remedy for persons who are deprived of constitutionally protected rights by persons acting "under the color of law." The 1961 Supreme Court decision, Monroe v. Pape, establishes federal courts as ...
Potter Stewart was working with these members while employed by the Supreme Court: John M. Harlan (1955–71), William J. Brennan, Jr. (1956–90), Charles E. Whittaker (1957–62), Byron R. White (1962–93), Arthur J. Goldberg (1962–65), Abe Fortas (1965–69), Thurgood Marshall (1967–91), Harry A. Blackmun (1970–94), Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (1971–87), William H. Rehnquist (1971–86) John Paul Stevens (1975–present).5
Stewart’s view were not always popular with the First Amendment advocates. He did write a Court decision limiting the ability of journalists to interview prison inmates in Pell vs. Procunier in 1974, but Stewart wasn’t out to please people. He once said that he wanted to be remembered as “a good lawyer who did his best.”6 Justice Potter Stewart, together with Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, held that under certain rare circumstances, journalists may be required to reveal their sources to a grand jury.
As a justice, Potter Stewart has made significant suggestions and new understanding while being a member of the Supreme Court. Stewart’s opinion in Katz vs. United States introduced a new understanding that the Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights protects the people, not the property of the people. Stewart wrote that the government was invading the expectation of privacy by placing recording devices in public phone booths. Due to this the Katz case made government wiretapping by both the state and federal authorities unlawful without warrants that were now required by the Fourth Amendment. In 1969, Stewart wrote as statement stating that arresting a suspect in their house does not give the arresting officers the right to search the suspect whole property with a warrant, just the surrounding areas of the arrestee. In the case Almeida-Sanchez vs. United States, Stewart wrote that patrols of the United States Border must have some justifiable reason for pulling over and stopping an automobile other than the fact that the vehicle is within one hundred miles of the international border. In the 1977 Whalen vs. Roe case Stewart objected to any establishment to a right of privacy, he reason being that it is was the Courts prior decisions not to “recognize a general interest in freedom from disclosure of private information.”7
The Term Paper on Supreme Court Justice Sonia Maria Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor was nominated by President Barack Obama to the Supreme Court on May 26, 2009. A vacancy became open upon the retirement of Justice Souter. If her nomination and approval by the Senate is approved, she would become the 111th Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Her confirmation hearing by the Senate did not go without controversy. Justice Sotomayor gave a speech at ...
In 1968, the case Jones vs., Alfred H. Mayer Co. Stewart reintroduced the 1866 Civil Rights Act to outlaw private refusals to buy, sell, or lease personal property for racial discriminatory reason. Also again in the 1976 case Runyon vs. McCrary he extended the Civil Rights Act with the case being private school open to all white students could no longer exclude black children.
In 1976, Stewart was writing in support of the court’s decision to uphold new state death penalty statutes, he invoked the strength of the public support as an important determining factor of that decision. The clearest hint of society’s support of the death penalty for murder, that Stewart observed, was that thirty-five state legislatures had in fact enacted new laws allowing capital punishment. “In part, capital punishment is an expression of society’s moral outrage at particularly offensive conduct. This function may be unappealing to many, but it is essential in an ordered society that asks its citizens to rely on legal processes rather than self-help to vindicate their wrongs.”8
However, Potter Stewart will always be remembered for his amusing line he recited in a opinion in the 1964 Jacobellis vs. Ohio case. Stewart stated, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description , and perhaps I could never succeed in indelibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.” Which was his reply when he was asked to define “hard-core pornography”, exactly what constitutes as hard-core pornography. At a press conference announcing his retirement on 1981, Potter Stewart noted that “I know it when I see it” would probably be the epitaph on his tombstone. “I regret a little bit that if I’ll be remembered at all, I’ll be remembered for that particular phrase.”9
Most of Stewart’s person and official papers are archived at the manuscript library of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where they are available for research. The files concerning Stewart’s service were closed to researchers and curious citizens until all the justices whom served with Stewart had left the court. The last justice who had served with Stewart was John Paul Stevens whom recognizes Stewart as his judicial hero. In 1985, upon Stewart’s death, Bob Woodward disclosed that Stewart had been the primary source for The Brethren.10
The Essay on In Support of the Death Penalty
The idea of putting another human to death is hard to completely fathom. The physical mechanics involved in the act of execution are easy to grasp, but the emotions involved in carrying out a death sentence on another person, regardless of how much they deserve it, is beyond my understanding. I know it must be painful, dehumanizing, and sickening. The Eight Amendment says” Excessive bail shall not ...
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