Potter Stewart
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Image:US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart - 1976 official portrait.jpg Potter Stewart (January 23, 1915 – December 7, 1985) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Education
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.
Stewart attended the Hotchkiss School, graduating in 1933. Then, he went on to Yale University, where he was a member of the 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. At Yale, he was a member of Phi Delta Phi and Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. Other members of that era included Gerald R. Ford, Peter H. Dominick, Walter Lord, William Scranton, R. Sargent Shriver, Cyrus R. Vance, and Byron R. White. The last would later become his colleague on the Supreme Court.
Life experience
He served in World War II as a member of the US Naval Reserve aboard oil tankers.
In 1943, he married Mary Ann Bertles in a ceremony at Bruton Episcopal Church in Williamsburg, Virginia. His brother, Zeph Stewart (an initiate of Skull and Bones), was the best man. They eventually had a daughter, Harriet (Virkstis), and two sons, Potter, Jr. and David.
He was employed in private practice at the law firm of Dinsmore & Shohl, LLP in Cincinnati and at the age of 39, in 1954, he was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Supreme Court service
In 1958, President Eisenhower nominated Stewart to the Supreme Court to replace Justice Harold Hitz Burton, who was retiring.
Stewart retained a moderate outlook throughout his tenure on the Court, perhaps best typified by his joining the decision in Furman v. Georgia (1972) which invalidated all death penalty laws then in force, and then joining in the Court's decision four years, Gregg v. Georgia, which upheld the revised capital punishment legislation adopted in a majority of the states. Stewart dissented from the Court's decision in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), invalidating a law banning the sale of contraceptives based on a "Right of Privacy," arguing that such a right did not exist, but changed his views and was a key mover behind the Court's decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), which recognized the right to abortion under the "Right of Privacy." Stewart wrote a concurrence in that case, accepting the right recognized in Griswold.
To the lay public, Stewart may be best known for a quotation, or a fragment thereof, from his opinion in the obscenity case of Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964). Stewart wrote in his short concurrence that "hard-core pornography" was hard to define, but that "I know it when I see it." Usually dropped from the quote is the remainder of that sentence, "and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." He later recanted this view in Miller v. California, in which he accepted that his prior view was simply untenable.
Prior to the appointment of Warren Burger as Chief Justice, many speculated that President Nixon would elevate Stewart to the post, some going so far as to call him the front-runner. Stewart, though flattered by the suggestion, did not want again to appear before--and expose his family to--the Senate confirmation process. Nor did he relish the prospect of taking on the administrative responsibilities delegated to the Chief Justice. Accordingly, he met privately with the president to ask that his name be removed from consideration.
Stewart remained on the Court until his retirement in July 1981 at the age of 66. He was succeeded by Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court.
After his retirement, he appeared in a series of public television specials about the United States Constitution with Fred W. Friendly.
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