By JAMES FINK
Business First

Almost as soon as U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement, Susan Low Bloch began to wonder.

Bloch has good reason to do so.

A Georgetown University law professor who specializes in both constitutional law and the Supreme Court, Bloch has a keen insight into the court's inner workings, having served as clerk to the late jurist Thurgood Marshall during the 1970s. That was around the same time that President Gerald Ford appointed Stevens to the bench.

A Republican who was viewed by many as just center of right when he came to the Supreme Court bench, as time progressed and the court's judical makeup changed, so did the public perception of Stevens.

"He is a moderate on a court that kept moving to the right," Bloch said. "At this point in time, he is considered the left and liberal end of the court. In reality, it is more a case of the court moving and less that he moved."

Stevens, 89, announced Friday that he will retire when the court completes its docket this summer. His announcement, which had been hinted at for several months, came just 11 days before Stevens' 90th birthday.

Coming in a mid-term-election year, the announcement also forces a potentially tough decision for President Obama. The Senate Democrats, with a 59-vote majority, hope to complete any judical nomination proceedings before the court reassembles this fall.

The political parlor game of guessing Obama's choice to replace Stevens has only just begun.

"It will be interesting," Bloch observed. "I'm sure there will be people telling Justice Stevens ‘Please don't go,' at some level."

For now, national groups and associations are offering praise for Stevens.

While Stevens often cast key votes and opinions on what many consider liberal-leaning decisions, in reality, a good share of his decisions were far more moderate.

"Justice Stevens was widely perceived as a maverick during his early years on the court and just as widely acknowledged as a master tactician during the latter stages of his career," noted Steven Shapiro, American Civil Liberties Union legal director. "From beginning to end, however, Justice Stevens has been an independent thinker who has been fiercely committed to the rule of the law and the court's role in preserving it."

While Stevens' decisions go back decades, to many, he is the Supreme Court justice who issued the key dissenting opinion in the President Bush/Vice President Gore federal election legal battle in 2000. A few years later, Stevens' decisions posed road blocks to the Bush administration as it attempted to deprive Guantanamo detainees of some rights.

"The civil-liberties legacy of Justice Stevens is deep and broad," Shapiro noted.

The Human Rights Campaign's Aaron Friedman, the organization's law fellow, praised Stevens for his belief in equal rights for all, regardless of their sexual orientation or lifestyle.

Friedman pointed to Stevens' 1986 dissent in the controversial Bowers v. Hardwick case, which upheld Georgia's sodomy laws, yet 17 years later, he joined the majority on the court in overturning the decision.

In a 2000 dissent in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, which allowed the scouting organization to exclude gay men from being scoutmasters, Stevens wrote, Friedman said, "that every state law prohibiting discrimination is designed to replace prejudice with principle."

Friedman said the Human Rights Campaign hopes whoever Obama choses to replace Stevens follows in his legacy of believing in equal rights for all, enforcing laws allowing full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, people with disabilities and racial, ethnic and religious minorities.

More recently, Stevens drew attention for his dissent in the Citizens United ruling on campaign-finance laws, allowing for indirect corporate support for politically motivated efforts.

"Above all else, you have to say that Justice Stevens was his own man," Bloch said. "He followed the law. He looked at cases on the whole and always considered the impact the judge's rulings would have on Americans. And he was hard to predict."