What Joan Biscupic Found in the John Paul Stevens Papers

A recent CNN article by Joan Biscupic includes a memo from Justice Stevens to Justice O’Connor citing an essay by my late colleague Nat Nathanson: 

But then, in his main order of business, Stevens urged her to look at a 1977 essay he attached to his personal note. “It strongly supports the durational requirement in the last part of your opinion. One of its authors, Nathaniel Nathanson, was a Brandeis clerk and taught me constitutional law at Northwestern. The entire article is consistent with your analysis, and some of his comments on page 292 might be worth including in a footnote.”

The next day, after O’Connor had sent out a new draft with some of the essay’s sentiments, Stevens wrote back to O’Connor: “Many thanks for the changes. I don’t mean to be a nuisance, but I want to point out that the sentence in the Nathanson article immediately following the one you quoted reads as follows: ‘But that is not the rationale for programs of preferential treatment; the acid test of their justification will be their efficacy in eliminating the need for any racial or ethnic preferences at all.’ Including that positive statement would really add strength to the opinion. Again, this is just a suggestion, but the one sentence that you do quote by itself seems to convey a somewhat different message.”

 

O’Connor ended up quoting that fuller section from the article co-authored by Nathanson and Casimir Bartnik entitled “The Constitutionality of Preferential Treatment of Minority Applicants to Professional Schools”: “It would be a sad day indeed, were America to become a quota-ridden society, with each identifiable minority assigned proportional representation in every desirable walk of life. But that is not the rationale for programs of preferential treatment; the acid test of their justification will be their efficacy in eliminating the need for any racial or ethnic preferences at all.”

Nat joined the Northwestern faculty in 1936, became emeritus in 1977 (we had mandatory retirement in those days), and continued teaching until he passed away in 1983. He was one of the kindest, most supportive people I've ever known. He was very enthusiastic about clinical and simulation teaching at a time when it was marginal at most law schools. I believe he was the last living Brandeis clerk.

It was especially moving to read the words of a Supreme Court justice invoking one of his professors, which should remind all of us about the incredible and lasting impact we may have on our students.