Supreme Court justices rarely respond publicly to news coverage or communicate with the media at all (unless they are on a book tour). But Justice John Paul Stevens felt compelled to write to the New York Times Magazine on Sunday to “correct certain misunderstandings” in its lengthy profile of Stevens published Sept. 23.
In the letter (apparently not yet online) Stevens said that while he did serve in the Navy communications intelligence unit at Pearl Harbor in World War II, he did not “help break the code” on a Japanese operation as the story suggested. Stevens added that he never turned down a teaching job at Yale Law School after his clerkship at the Supreme Court 60 years ago — though it is true he was not interested in teaching at the time.
