This advisory is to alert members of the news media that the Honorable John Paul Stevens, retired associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, will appear at Princeton University at 4:30 p.m., Monday, Oct. 10, in Richardson Auditorium of Alexander Hall on the University campus.
The event, "The Court, the Constitution, and the Justice from Illinois," is sponsored jointly by Princeton's Program in Law and Public Affairs' John Marshall Harlan '20 Lecture in Constitutional Adjudication and Princeton University Public Lectures' Walter E. Edge Fund. The format will be a conversation between Justice Stevens and University Provost Christopher Eisgruber. Admission is open to the public but requires a free ticket.
Tickets and seating will be reserved for media who RSVP by Oct. 4.
Nominated to the Supreme Court by President Gerald Ford in 1975, Stevens served as associate justice until his retirement in June 2010. At the time of his retirement, he was the oldest member of the Court and the third-longest serving in Court history. A graduate of the University of Chicago and the Northwestern University School of Law, Stevens focused on antitrust law in private practice before being appointed in 1969 counsel for the Greenberg Commission, which successfully prosecuted corruption charges against Illinois Supreme Court justices Ray Klingbiel and Roy Solfisburg. In 1970 President Richard Nixon appointed Stevens to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and five years later Ford nominated him for the nation's highest court. Generally regarded as a moderate, Stevens wrote a mordant dissenting opinion on the Supreme Court's ruling to halt the recount of votes in Florida during the 2000 presidential election.
Eisgruber, who also serves as the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Public Affairs in Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the University Center for Human Values, said of Stevens, "Over the course of his remarkable career, John Paul Stevens demonstrated himself to be a brilliant lawyer, a gifted jurist and a faithful guardian of this country's constitutional values. His humane appreciation for the law and his experience on the Supreme Court have provided him with a unique perspective on constitutional justice in America, and I am delighted that he has agreed to share his insights with the Princeton community."
Eisgruber, a graduate of Princeton University, Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and the University of Chicago Law School, clerked for Justice Stevens. He is the author of several books on the Supreme Court and the Constitution.
Members of the news media who plan to attend should email Martin Mbugua (mmbugua@princeton.edu) no later than 5 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 4, to ensure that we reserve tickets and seats. You will receive further instructions on where to pick up your ticket.
