美国国家公共电台 NPR Retired Justice John Paul Stevens Talks History, His New Book And Ping-Pong

 

NOEL KING, HOST:

And now a story that takes the long view - the very long view. In 2010, at the age of 90, Supreme¹ Court Justice John Paul Stevens retired² after 35 years on the nation's highest court. Since then he's been busy writing lots of articles. And now he's written a third book titled "The Making Of A Justice."

NPR's legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reached him at his condo in Florida.

NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE³: In the past when I've interviewed Justice Stevens, he was in chambers⁴, often without a jacket but always wearing his signature bow tie.

JOHN PAUL STEVENS: I'm much more casual.

TOTENBERG: (Laughter).

STEVENS: I just played Ping-Pong. I'm in my pingpong outfit⁵.

TOTENBERG: To be precise, a red, short-sleeved shirt, blue plaid Bermuda shorts, athletic⁶ socks and running shoes. John Paul Stevens may be 99, but he's no slacker.

STEVENS: I play Ping-Pong a couple of times a week. Another day a week I play nine holes of golf. I don't hit the ball very far, but at least I can hit it.

TOTENBERG: He still swims in the ocean with the aid of neighbors who help him in and out of the waves, and he plays bridge two or three times a week. His memoir⁷ starts at age 5 when, though small of stature⁸, he passed the kindergarten physical test with flying colors but flunked⁹ the mental test.

The book winds through his years growing up, including the arrest and eventual¹⁰ exoneration¹¹ of his father on criminal charges, his years as a Navy codebreaker in the Pacific theater during World War II and his law career - from attending Northwestern on the GI Bill to life as a litigator and lower court judge. But the bulk of the book is about Stevens' life on the Supreme Court, what happened each term and what he thought about it.

So this book is your last hurrah¹² as an author. What do you want to say?

STEVENS: Well, it's hard to summarize everything in just a few words. But part of what I would say is the world is changing much faster than I anticipated.

TOTENBERG: Is it changing for the better or worse?

STEVENS: For the worse.

TOTENBERG: Why is it worse? Though he's no longer a sitting justice, Stevens answers as if he still were on the court.

STEVENS: Well, in my job I avoid political commentary, but I am offended by much that the leaders of our country are engaged in now.

TOTENBERG: In his last years on the Supreme Court, Stevens was publicly worried about the court's rightward tilt¹³. But now off the court, he's even more worried. He sees a newly constituted and more aggressive conservative court majority acting¹⁴ in a, quote, "less neutral fashion." For example, he dissented¹⁵ fiercely in 2008 when the court ruled for the first time that the Second Amendment¹⁶ guarantees a right to own a gun.

STEVENS: Its analysis of the history and the reasons for the amendment was dead wrong.

TOTENBERG: Still, as Stevens discloses in his book, Justice Anthony Kennedy, who provided the fifth and decisive vote in the case, insisted that the decision include language protecting reasonable gun regulations. Kennedy, however, retired last June, to be replaced by Brett Kavanaugh, who, as a lower court judge, viewed as unconstitutional every major gun regulation that came before him.

So what hope, if any, do you have for the court upholding serious gun regulation were it to pass?

STEVENS: I suppose the odds¹⁷ are not very favorable now.

TOTENBERG: Stevens is equally critical of the court's recent decisions - striking down all manner of campaign finance regulations and the gutting¹⁸ of voting rights legislation.

Judicial¹⁹ doctrine²⁰ does change over time. But do you think that the current court is taking a radical²¹ turn to the right?

STEVENS: Yes, I really do. I think some of the decisions really are quite wrong, and they're quite contrary to the public interest.

TOTENBERG: Every member of the court, not just the chief justice, goes around saying, we are not politicians; we're judges. But it gets harder and harder for some people to believe that.

STEVENS: Well, it's harder and harder to believe. But there's still some hope that it won't be totally that way. But it is true that it seems to be more ideological²² than it's been since the 1930s.

TOTENBERG: Stevens was appointed to the court by President Ford²³ in 1975. He was considered a moderate conservative then. But by the time he retired in 2010, he was considered the court's most liberal justice. He has consistently maintained that for the most part, he didn't change. The change was in the composition of the court. Indeed, in the years that followed his appointment, increasingly conservative Republican presidents appointed increasingly conservative justices. And the Republican appointments outnumbered the Democratic appointments by more than 2 to 1.

Over the last two decades, Republican presidents have prided themselves on appointing judges who call themselves originalists. So I asked Justice Stevens, what does he call himself? If not an originalist, what is he? His answer returns to the beginning of our interview.

STEVENS: I'm a person who plays Ping-Pong once in awhile (laughter).

TOTENBERG: So is he the condo champion?

STEVENS: I'm better than anybody at my age. If you can find anybody at my age that plays, I'll challenge them.

TOTENBERG: The competitive spirit lives on in John Paul Stevens.

Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.

1 supreme   

adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的

参考例句：

• It was the supreme moment in his life.那是他一生中最重要的时刻。
• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。

2 retired   

adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的

参考例句：

• The old man retired to the country for rest.这位老人下乡休息去了。
• Many retired people take up gardening as a hobby.许多退休的人都以从事园艺为嗜好。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 chambers   

n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅

参考例句：

• The body will be removed into one of the cold storage chambers. 尸体将被移到一个冷冻间里。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Mr Chambers's readable book concentrates on the middle passage: the time Ransome spent in Russia. Chambers先生的这本值得一看的书重点在中间：Ransome在俄国的那几年。 来自互联网

5 outfit   

n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装

参考例句：

• Jenney bought a new outfit for her daughter's wedding.珍妮为参加女儿的婚礼买了一套新装。
• His father bought a ski outfit for him on his birthday.他父亲在他生日那天给他买了一套滑雪用具。

6 athletic   

adj.擅长运动的，强健的；活跃的，体格健壮的

参考例句：

• This area has been marked off for athletic practice.这块地方被划出来供体育训练之用。
• He is an athletic star.他是一个运动明星。

7 memoir   

n.[pl.]回忆录，自传；记事录

参考例句：

• He has just published a memoir in honour of his captain.他刚刚出了一本传记来纪念他的队长。
• In her memoir,the actress wrote about the bittersweet memories of her first love.在那个女演员的自传中，她写到了自己苦乐掺半的初恋。

8 stature   

n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材

参考例句：

• He is five feet five inches in stature.他身高5英尺5英寸。
• The dress models are tall of stature.时装模特儿的身材都较高。

9 flunked   

v.( flunk的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）（考试、某学科的成绩等）不及格；评定（某人）不及格；（因不及格而） 退学

参考例句：

• I flunked math in second grade. 我二年级时数学不及格。
• He flunked out (of college) last year. 他去年（从大学）退学了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

10 eventual   

adj.最后的，结局的，最终的

参考例句：

• Several schools face eventual closure.几所学校面临最终关闭。
• Both parties expressed optimism about an eventual solution.双方对问题的最终解决都表示乐观。

11 exoneration   

n.免罪，免除

参考例句：

• Empathy for the criminal's childhood misery does not imply exoneration of the crimes he committed as an adult. 对罪犯悲惨的童年表示怜悯不等于可以免除他长大成人后所犯的罪。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Exoneration or rehabilitation should be made known as widely as were the original wrong decisions. 原来在什么范围内弄错的，也应该在什么范围内宣布平反。 来自互联网

12 hurrah   

int.好哇，万岁，乌拉

参考例句：

• We hurrah when we see the soldiers go by.我们看到士兵经过时向他们欢呼。
• The assistants raised a formidable hurrah.助手们发出了一片震天的欢呼声。

13 tilt   

v.(使)倾侧；(使)倾斜；n.倾侧；倾斜

参考例句：

• She wore her hat at a tilt over her left eye.她歪戴着帽子遮住左眼。
• The table is at a slight tilt.这张桌子没放平，有点儿歪.

14 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

15 dissented   

不同意，持异议( dissent的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• We dissented from the decision. 对那项决定我们表示了不同意见。
• He dissented and questioned the justice of the award. 他提出质问，说裁判不公允。

16 amendment   

n.改正，修正，改善，修正案

参考例句：

• The amendment was rejected by 207 voters to 143.这项修正案以207票对143票被否决。
• The Opposition has tabled an amendment to the bill.反对党已经就该议案提交了一项修正条款。

17 odds   

n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别

参考例句：

• The odds are 5 to 1 that she will win.她获胜的机会是五比一。
• Do you know the odds of winning the lottery once?你知道赢得一次彩票的几率多大吗？

18 gutting   

n.去内脏v.毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的现在分词 )；取出…的内脏

参考例句：

19 judicial   

adj.司法的，法庭的，审判的，明断的，公正的

参考例句：

• He is a man with a judicial mind.他是个公正的人。
• Tom takes judicial proceedings against his father.汤姆对他的父亲正式提出诉讼。

20 doctrine   

n.教义；主义；学说

参考例句：

• He was impelled to proclaim his doctrine.他不得不宣扬他的教义。
• The council met to consider changes to doctrine.宗教议会开会考虑更改教义。

21 radical   

n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的

参考例句：

• The patient got a radical cure in the hospital.病人在医院得到了根治。
• She is radical in her demands.她的要求十分偏激。

22 ideological   

a.意识形态的

参考例句：

• He always tries to link his study with his ideological problems. 他总是把学习和自己的思想问题联系起来。
• He helped me enormously with advice on how to do ideological work. 他告诉我怎样做思想工作，对我有很大帮助。

23 Ford   

n.浅滩，水浅可涉处；v.涉水，涉过

参考例句：

• They were guarding the bridge,so we forded the river.他们驻守在那座桥上，所以我们只能涉水过河。
• If you decide to ford a stream,be extremely careful.如果已决定要涉过小溪，必须极度小心。