By Joan Biskupic
USA TODAY 

WASHINGTON � In the 1970s, soon after Justice John Paul Stevens joined the Supreme Court, he asked a clerk to figure out the average age justices retired.

"I had him make a study," Stevens recalled, "so that I could plan ahead and retire at that age." The average was a bit over 70.

Stevens is now six months shy of 90. He is about to become the fifth-longest-serving justice in history and, more important for the law in America, he has emerged as a skilled tactician crafting liberal majorities on key cases in an era of judicial conservatism.

As leader of the nine-member court's liberal wing, Stevens has forged delicate majorities in areas of the law such as the rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, allowing them to get hearings before federal judges. Stevens has had a knack for working with centrist conservatives such as former justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the swing vote on cases.

The self-effacing man who is rarely recognized beyond the court's marble walls is a powerhouse behind the scenes � and this might be his last term.

Stevens' retirement would leave a major gap among liberals and shake up a court already in transition with a new justice this term. He has not hired his usual set of law clerks for the session beginning next October. He says he is surprised by media attention to a signal he might retire soon.

"That can't be news," he says, declining to reveal his plans. "I'm not exactly a kid."

In a rare interview, Stevens was expansive about his nearly 34-year tenure, spoke warmly about his colleagues and elaborated on his outside pursuits � tennis and golf, plus a daily swim in the ocean when at his Fort Lauderdale home. He eluded questions about retirement, yet his tone looking back on his work was valedictory.

"We're getting to a point that our cases are revisiting issues that I wrote on 10, 20, 30 years ago," he says. "I really have felt pretty good about re-reading the opinions I wrote many years ago. I have to confess that."

Stevens' departure would alter the court and could strengthen the hand of its conservatives. President Obama likely would appoint a successor whose votes are similarly liberal. But it would be unlikely that a freshman justice could assume Stevens' mantle of leadership on the divided court, which has four reliable conservatives and four liberals, and Kennedy often straddling the middle.

Harvard University law professor Richard Fallon says Stevens' retirement would leave a significant void, especially given the role he took on after liberals William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall retired in the 1990s.

"Justice Stevens became the strongest, most articulate voice on the court defending the rights of criminal defendants and racial, religious, and other minorities," Fallon says. He describes Stevens as "a wily practitioner of coalition politics, who has cobbled together liberal majorities for a number of important decisions in a generally conservative era."

Yet Stevens has one of the lowest profiles.

Unlike Justice Antonin Scalia on the right or Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the left, Stevens avoids the speaking circuit. A recent C-SPAN survey found Stevens and Justices Kennedy and Stephen Breyer tied in last place for public recognition among the justices. Only 1% of those polled in a June survey could name them.

The Chicago native who sported one of his signature bow ties in the interview � red plaid � complimented his colleagues even as he acknowledged disagreements. "Sometimes I'm disappointed in the decisions they reach," he says, "but I respect every one of them."

Among other points he made during a 75-minute interview with USA TODAY:

•On new Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who just began her first term: "I know she's conscientious, capable, just as solid as can be." The president "really did a good job on that one."

•On opinions he finds noteworthy, he cited cases in which he crafted a narrow majority to enhance the role of juries in criminal sentencing. On affirmative action, he cited a 1986 dissenting opinion he wrote saying school boards should be able to justify hiring some black teachers over whites not only to remedy past bias, but also to advance the public interest in fully educating children.

•On his fondness for past colleagues, he recalled his regular bets with the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist on Washington Redskins football games, for a dollar: "He was more cold, calculating, (and) had no hesitation in taking advantage of the fact that I tended to bet on the Redskins even though they were a long shot."

•On how he'd like to be remembered: "It sounds kind of corny … but basically you hope people think you did a good job and that some of the things you wrote made some sense."

Stevens' career on the high court began in 1975, when the longest-serving justice, William O. Douglas, retired after 36 years.

President Ford sought someone without an ideological record and acted on the advice of Attorney General Edward Levi, who had known Stevens from Chicago legal circles. Stevens, then 55 and scion of a Chicago family that owned luxury hotels, was a federal appeals court judge widely seen as a pragmatic conservative.

In his first years on the court, Stevens' votes often fell between the liberals and conservatives. He was known for a singular, quirky approach that defied predictions. When the vote was 8-1, he often was the dissenter.

"In the early phase of his career, Stevens often had a genuinely original way of looking at … issues," Fallon says. "He followed his ideas where they took him in a way that was neither consistently liberal nor conservative."

Stevens says he regards himself as a conservative of sorts � even today, when nearly every justice is to the ideological right of him.

"You can be a conservative by deciding cases narrowly and paying attention to (precedent)," he says, then adds, "If you look at political outcomes" to label a justice, "it's a very different thing."

In the conservative camp ideologically are the Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and often, Kennedy. On the left with Stevens are Breyer and Ginsburg. Based on her appointment by Obama and early signals from the bench, Sotomayor appears likely to join this wing.

"The makeup of the court has changed dramatically," Stevens says. "If you use the term 'conservative' the way a lot of people use it, since I joined the court, every new appointee has been more conservative than his or her predecessor. You can go right down the line."

He says the only exception is Ginsburg's succeeding Byron White in 1993; he did not address newest justice Sotomayor, who has yet to issue an opinion.

Asked what he thought about appointments that tipped the court to the right, he said, "I shouldn't comment on that. You're asking me to comment on what I think of my colleagues."

Stevens has not shied from criticism in some opinions. When a majority two years ago voted against voluntary school integration plans, he wrote, "It is my firm conviction that no member of the court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today's decision."

When the court's conservative majority in 2000 halted the Florida election recounts and helped George W. Bush to the White House over Al Gore, Stevens wrote, "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."

Stevens says he considered retiring in the late 1980s, after he had turned 65.

His pension would have been about the amount of his salary, and he has many outside pursuits. But he changed his mind as he continued to find the work satisfying. Some former clerks believe Stevens stayed partly to fight the increasingly conservative bent of the court.

"It seems that over the last decade or so, Justice Stevens has really become a master tactician on the court," says Pamela Harris, a former Stevens law clerk who runs the Georgetown University Supreme Court Institute. "We can't know, but maybe he assumed that new role because he thought the stakes were getting so high, in terms of how far the court might move to the right."

In the mid-2000s, Stevens worked closely with then-swing-vote justice O'Connor for decisions that bucked the conservative trend of limiting affirmative action and diminishing federal power in favor of the states. In a 2004 decision, his reasoning won O'Connor's vote for a five-justice majority ruling that people with disabilities could sue states to gain access to courthouses under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In a 2003 University of Michigan affirmative action case, Stevens, as the senior justice on the left, assigned O'Connor the opinion for the five-justice majority that upheld a law school admissions policy that considered applicants' race.

In more recent years, Stevens worked closely with Kennedy on decisions rejecting the Bush administration's efforts to block foreign detainees at the Guantanamo Bay naval base from getting into federal courts.

Stevens disputes any suggestion that he has special influence with his colleagues. "I really don't think there's been any change in the way I work," he says. "I know I get credit for things that never happened."

Notre Dame law professor Richard Garnett, a former law clerk to Rehnquist, says Stevens' influence has not come from a consistent constitutional vision, as Scalia's has, or by force of personality, as Brennan's did.

"Stevens' influence comes in a third way," Garnett says, pointing to the justice's long tenure and senior status � which includes the power to assign which justice writes the court's opinion when Stevens is in the majority and the chief justice is on the other side.

Garnett says that on disputes over Guantanamo detainees, gay rights and the death penalty, Stevens has worked with "swing" justices to take "a lead role in shaping how these opinions are reasoned and written." When the court is closely divided, justices who control the majority usually try to craft an opinion as narrowly as possible so that they do not lose the key swing vote.

In the extracurricular life of the Supreme Court, Stevens has never been much of a joiner. Unlike Kennedy and O'Connor, he has not played cards with his colleagues � despite being a nationally competitive bridge player. Unlike Ginsburg and Scalia, he has not bonded over jaunts to the opera and theater. He has gone his own way, and during his earlier years even flew his own small airplane.

Beginning each November, Stevens and his wife, Maryan, spend the colder months at their Fort Lauderdale home when the court is not hearing cases.

Did he ever think he'd be serving on the Supreme Court at 90?

"I never thought I'd be serving on the court at age 55," Stevens replies.

In recent years, Stevens says, he has been watching for any decline in his productivity or too much reliance on his law clerks.

"When I stop writing first drafts" of opinions, he says, that's when he'll step down.

Would that be the only test for retirement?

As he sits at a small table in his chambers, hands clasped in front of him, Stevens answers coyly: "We'll wait and see."