Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, an alumnus of the Northwestern School of Law, announced last week his retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a letter sent last Friday to President Barack Obama with the heading, “My dear Mr. President,” Stevens, 89, wrote that he intends to step down “effective the next day after the Court rises for the summer recess this year.”

Stevens was sworn in to the nation’s highest court in 1975.

Robert W. Bennett, an NU Law professor, said he likely first met him while Stevens served in the first half of the 1970s as a judge in the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Bennett noted Stevens for his “modesty and lack of presumptuousness.”

“He’s a very easy-going guy,” he said. “He’s not full of himself.”

Yet Bennett said Stevens’ term on the Supreme Court has been typified by a spirit of independence, not as a “political animal.”

“He’s his own man,” he said. “He’s not a wheeler and dealer. He sticks to it…. He’s hard to sway if he gets his mind set on some position.”

Typically depicted as a staid liberal and a leader of the court’s liberal bloc, Bennett said an example of Stevens’ independence is in his dissent in 1989’s Texas vs. Johnson, a 5-4 decision that said desecration of the American flag is protected speech under the First Amendment.

Bennett, on faculty since 1969 and dean from 1985 to 1995 , said Stevens has maintained ties with the school, stopping by periodically and occasionally taking law clerks from NU’s School of Law.

Without him, Bennett said the court will “take a while for a real substitute to get broken in.”

“The theological complexion of the court will be much the same, but it’s hard to replace his experience,” he said.

Stevens was born in Chicago on April 20, 1920, and received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1941. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he returned to Chicago and graduated from the School of Law in 1947. Stevens also received an honorary doctorate degree from NU in 1977.

– ANDREW SCOGGIN