Stevens, who will turn 90 in April and is the eldest justice on the current court,......

[snip]

Stevens has not hired a full slate of law clerks for next term, as he usually would have done by now. In an interview with USA TODAY in October, he declined to reveal his retirement plans, yet said about the fact that he had not hired a full staff, "That can't be news. I'm not exactly a kid."

WASHINGTON – Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens says he "will surely" retire while President Barack Obama is still in office, giving the president the opportunity to maintain the high court's ideological balance.

Stevens said in newspaper interviews on the Web Saturday that he will decide soon on the timing of his retirement, whether it will be this year or next. Stevens, the leader of the court's liberals, turns 90 this month and is the oldest justice.

I've said it before, but those who need to categorize people and ideas have either small or lazy minds.

In a series of controversial cases about abortion, racial integration in schools, faith-based programs and the death penalty, the court’s four more conservative justices prevailed, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy providing the crucial fifth vote. The four more liberal justices were often moved to dissent in unusually personal and vehement terms. “It is my firm conviction,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the case striking down race-based enrollment policies in public schools, “that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today’s decision.” According to the gossip among Supreme Court law clerks, the level of tension among the justices is higher than at any point since Bush v. Gore in 2000.