A reader points out that the penultimate paragraph of Jeff Rosen’s lengthy NY Times Magazine profile of Justice Stevens is the following:
- Near the end of my interview with Stevens, as I started to leave his chambers, he almost shyly suggested that I might want to consult some of the opinions he wrote on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago, before he joined the Supreme Court. I should be sure, he said, to look up a case from 1970, in which his colleagues, at the request of an incumbent U.S. senator from Indiana, stopped a recount in a close election on the grounds that it might compromise the integrity of the ballots. Stevens dissented, insisting that the recount procedures were perfectly fair and that the state judges should be trusted to handle the litigation honestly, without having their impartiality questioned by interference from federal courts. I asked Stevens why the decision was important. “Because,” he said, his eyes flashing, “I had it very much in mind when I wrote Bush against Gore.”