When President Gerald R. Ford appointed John Paul Stevens to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1975, it was hailed as a victory for conservatism: Stevens replaced Justice William O. Douglas, an unapologetically liberal Franklin Delano Roosevelt nominee who had been on the High Court since 1939. Yet even though he was a conservative and Democrats controlled the U.S. Senate in 1975, Stevens was confirmed unanimously; not one Democratic senator voted against his confirmation. And the 99-year-old Stevens, who retired in 2010 and was replaced by Barack Obama appointee Elena Kagan, reflected on the current state of the Supreme Court and U.S. politics in an interview with the Wall Street Journal’s Jess Bravin.
President Donald Trump is vowing to resist all subpoenas issued by investigative committees in the Democrat-led House of Representatives—and Stevens believes that Trump is overreaching.
“I think there are things we should be concerned about, there’s no doubt about that,” Stevens tells Bravin in his article. And he goes on to elaborate, “The president is exercising powers that do not really belong to him. I mean, he has to comply with subpoenas and things like that.”
View the complete May 10 article by Alex Henderson of AlterNet on the National Memo website here.