Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Stevens to retire?
Rumors abound that Justice Stevens may be planning to retire at the end of the new Supreme Court term. The gist of this rumor is that since Stevens has only hired one clerk for the 2010-11 term, and he would normally have hired all four clerks by now, that he must be planning to step down. Retired justices are allowed to hire one clerk. This all makes perfect sense, but when I googled "Justice Stevens retirement" I got pages of news stories and blog posts predicting his retirement going back at least as far as 2006, so I'd not read too much into the most current rumors. That said, many people predicted Justice Souter's retirement based on his not hiring clerks for this SC term.
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Deborah Pearlstein, former clerk, and Ben Barnhart, who is currently authoring a biography on Justice Stevens, have both writen that they "would not be surprised" if Justice Stevens deicded to retire at the end of the upcoming term.
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2009/09/stevens-speculation.html
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2009/09/justice-stevens-exiting-next-year.html
Whether these individuals have some 'insider knowledge', I am unsure, but what is sure is that they have worked closely with Justice Stevens and as a result know him fair well. Because of this, I would put some weight behind their words.
In any sense, it will be interesting to watch.
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