Justice Stevens' letter to the NYT

by James Oliphant

There was a time when Supreme Court justices rarely gave interviews, or wrote books. And they didn’t pen letters to the editor either.

Those days are obviously gone. Clarence Thomas’ memoir today shares the bestseller list with Jeffrey Toobin’s “The Nine,” an inside look at the judicial branch.

Now, John Paul Stevens is complaining to the New York Times. Stevens was profiled in the Times magazine last month by Jeffrey Rosen, a writer and professor at George Washington University.

The magazine published a letter Sunday from Justice Stevens, who said that while Rosen’s piece was “well intentioned,” he felt “compelled to correct certain misunderstandings” in the article.

Stevens, who granted Rosen an extended interview, says the writer mistakenly credited him with helping to break a secret Japanese naval code in World War II. (Stevens did serve in the Navy’s communication intelligence unit at Pearl Harbor.)

Stevens also said Rosen wrote that Stevens took sides politically in Chicago against the “corruption of the Daley machine.” The justice says in the letter that he had “never suggested that the Daley machine was corrupt.”

While it isn’t unheard of for a justice to complain to a journalist privately about a mistake, Stevens obviously felt the need to address the issues publicly, perhaps sending a warning to all reporters who cover the court that they aren’t beyond being held accountable by the justices.

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)