By Bill Barnhart, Author, John Paul Stevens: An Independent Life
When World War II ended, Navy Reserve Lieutenant John P. Stevens in Pearl Harbor received a letter from his brother Jim, a lawyer in Chicago. He urged his younger brother, who had begun graduate studies in English literature before the war, to consider law as a profession. John, who had married shortly after enlisting on December 6, 1941, agreed. The rest, as they say, is history.
But not exactly. Justice Stevens has never written any type of memoir or anything else about his background or history for general public consumption. In certain court opinions and speeches to professional groups, he has referred to his past and his family's past, but he is not one to dwell on the past. What is your favorite case, I once foolishly asked him. "The one I'm working on now," he replied.