Retired Justice John Paul Stevens called the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller decision the worst ruling of his tenure on the Supreme Court in a Tuesday essay in The Atlantic. Stevens, 99, wrote the main dissent in Heller, which affirmed the right to possess firearms in the home for self defense, and has harshly criticized the decision since he left the Supreme Court in 2010. “Their twin failure — first, the misreading of the intended meaning of the Second Amendment, and second, the failure to respect settled precedent — represents the worst self-inflicted wound in the Court’s history,” Stevens wrote in Tuesday’s essay. The essay accompanies the release of a Stevens memoir called “The Making of a Justice: Reflections on My First 94 Years.” The book, published Tuesday, reveals new details about the court’s deliberations during the Heller case, a rare inside account of internal business that is sometimes inscrutable even to the closest observers. In an unusual move, Stevens circulated a draft dissent among his fellow justices long before the late Justice Antonin Scalia finished his majority opinion. Stevens said he hoped to persuade Justices Anthony Kennedy or Clarence Thomas to change their votes — Kennedy being especially attentive to the human dimensions of a case and Thomas a careful student of history. (RELATED: Democratic Efforts To Pack The Supreme Court Just Hit A Big Wall: Public Opinion) Though his efforts were unsuccessful, Stevens said he managed to extract some concessions from the majority to ensure the decision would not eviscerate gun control measures. Indeed, lower courts have cited Heller while upholding gun control laws in the years after Heller. Stevens has urged aggressive action to overturn Heller since leaving the court, going so far as counseling a full repeal of the Second Amendment in a March 2018 New York Times op-ed. “I have written in other contexts that an amendment to the Constitution to overrule Heller is desperately needed to prevent tragedies such as the massacre of 20 grammar-school children at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, from ever happening again,” Stevens wrote Tuesday. Follow Kevin on Twitter Send tips to kevin@ dailycallernewsfoundation.org Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.<doc-sep>Amna Nawaz: Former Justice John Paul Stevens spent 35 years on the Supreme Court writing some of the court's most important decisions. Today, at 99 years old, he's still writing and weighing in on some of the country's most controversial issues. Judy Woodruff caught up with Justice Stevens last month. And he shared his thoughts on everything from President Trump to how a childhood accident shaped his future views on gun ownership.<doc-sep>Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States John Paul Stevens, 99, sits for a portrait on Thursday, May 9, 2019 in Fort Lauderdale, FL. (Photo by Scott McIntyre/For The Washington Post via Getty Images) (CNN) — John Paul Stevens – an outspoken retired justice – said he hoped President Donald Trump would not damage on the nation’s courts “too much” and waved off nascent proposals by Democrats to add more seats to the Supreme Court. “I hope he won’t do too much damage,” the retired liberal justice told CNN’s John Berman. Speaking in an interview that aired Tuesday on CNN’s “New Day” as he releases a memoir, the 99-year-old former jurist sounded off on Trump’s reshaping of the courts as well as a proposal that has gotten sign off from some Democrats to alter the balance of the Supreme Court. “I don’t think they should do that,” Stevens said of court packing proposals. “I think in time the court will straighten itself out. It may take longer, but I don’t think the answer is increasing the number of justices.” ’Roberts was dead right’ in response to Trump One of the most significant areas of Trump’s presidency has been the nomination and successful Senate confirmation of scores of federal judges for lifetime appointments, including two members of the Supreme Court. Notably, the efforts have been championed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and done with the advice of conservative advocates. Stevens said while he would not have made the same judicial appointments as Trump, he thought Trump was “getting advice from people who are knowledgeable about judges.” But when asked if Trump understood the role of the judiciary, Stevens responded flatly: “No.” “I think he often speaks about them as Obama judges and other kinds of judges,” Stevens said. “But I think (Chief Justice) John Roberts was dead right when he said that there are only one kind of judges and they’re all working for the federal government.” Stevens was referencing Trump’s frequent criticism of judges as political actors, dismissing some appointees of President Barack Obama who have decided against him. The criticism landed Trump a rare rebuke from Roberts last year, to which Trump fired back at Roberts and doubled down on his remarks. Stevens was appointed by President Gerald Ford, a Republican, and came to be regarded as a liberal member of the court. He stepped down during the Obama administration, and in his CNN interview, Stevens said he did not know if he was a Republican or not anymore. “I can say I do not expect to vote for the Republican candidate for president at the next election,” Stevens said. “I don’t know whether I’m a member of the party or I’m not. I’m not active politically.” On two sitting justices Stevens said during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation last year there was “merit” to criticism that the Trump’s nominee had demonstrated “potential bias.” He called on senators to focus on the problem and suggested Kavanaugh should not be confirmed. Of course, after the contentious hearings were through, the Senate voted to confirm Kavanaugh, who has since settled into his position on the nation’s highest court. Stevens told CNN that Kavanaugh was a “good judge” and had been doing a good job on the Supreme Court so far, but when asked if he regretted speaking out, Stevens said, “No, that’s really an entirely separate issue.” “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said what I did,” he continued. “But I think his decisions will determine how good a judge he’ll be.” Stevens said last year that his decision to step down came from when he suffered a “mini-stroke” while reading from the bench. Asked about any similar health considerations that have been brought up about liberal icon Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stevens said he understood those who want her to stay on the court until a Democrat again occupies the Oval Office. “And I think she’s really in better health than people generally assume, cause she’s survived both cancer and a similar episode some years ago,” Stevens said. “And she – apparently, she has a trainer too.”<doc-sep>Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said this week that he is concerned President Trump Donald TrumpTrump lashes out after grand jury seated for New York criminal probe Schumer tees up vote on Jan. 6 commission bill Senators struggle to save Jan. 6 commission MORE is "exercising powers that do not really belong to him." Stevens, 99, who retired in 2010, told The Wall Street Journal there are "things we should all be concerned about." When pressed for specifics, Stevens said he thinks Trump is exercising powers that are not within a president’s authority. ADVERTISEMENT "I mean, he has to comply with subpoenas and things like that," Stevens, an appointee of former Republican President Ford, told the outlet. Stevens's comments came after Trump vowed last month to fight "all the subpoenas" issued by House Democrats as they seek to investigate his campaign, business and administration. Trump has sought a preliminary injunction to stop Deutsche Bank and Capital One from handing over financial records pertaining to him, his family and his private businesses that were requested in subpoenas issued by House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters Maxine Moore WatersFauci may have unwittingly made himself a key witness for Trump in 'China Flu' hate-speech case Of inmates and asylums: Today's House Republicans make the John Birchers look quaint Juan Williams: Tim Scott should become a Democrat MORE (D-Calif.) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff Adam Bennett SchiffSchiff: Marjorie Taylor Greene's actions 'a sign of the greater rot in her party' Sunday shows - Cheney removal, CDC guidance reverberate Schiff: Biden administration needs to 'push harder' to stop violence in Mideast MORE (D-Calif.). Attorneys for the Democratic-controlled House Financial Services and Intelligence committees, meanwhile, have accused the president of attempting to stop lawmakers from carrying out legitimate investigations. House Democrats in court documents said they "are investigating serious and urgent questions concerning the safety of banking practices, money laundering in the financial sector, foreign influence in the U.S. political process, and the threat of foreign financial leverage, including over the President, his family, and his business." Trump is also suing to stop a congressional subpoena issued by House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings Elijah Eugene CummingsLawmakers press AbbVie CEO on increased US prices of two drugs Overnight Health Care: AstraZeneca may have included outdated data on vaccine trial, officials say | Pelosi says drug pricing measure under discussion for infrastructure package | Biden administration extends special ObamaCare enrollment until August Pelosi: Drug pricing measure under discussion for infrastructure package MORE (D-Md.) for financial records from the accounting firm Mazars. Stevens was appointed to the high court in 1975 and was confirmed 98-0 by a Democratic-led Senate to succeed a liberal justice. He retired from the bench as the head of the liberal minority, the Journal noted. His new book, "The Making of a Justice: Reflections on My First 94 Years," will be released May 14.<doc-sep>
THE MAKING OF A JUSTICE Reflections on My First 94 Years By John Paul Stevens John Paul Stevens ended his remarkable 35-year term on the Supreme Court with the approval of the Republican president who appointed him and the Democratic one who replaced him. Gerald Ford wrote in 2005 that he was prepared to let “history’s judgment” of his presidency rest exclusively on his decision in 1975 to nominate Stevens. Barack Obama scrawled his endorsement on a birthday note to Stevens in 2014 — “We miss you on the Court!” The cross-party embrace of Stevens by these two presidents shows the distance to the right the Republican Party has traveled from Ford to Trump far more than Stevens’s own shift in the opposite direction. He was the last of a group of Republican appointees (Earl Warren, William Brennan, Harry Blackmun, David Souter and, to a degree, Sandra Day O’Connor) who breathed compassion into the law and put the impact of their decisions on real people above arid theories. In one of his last judicial opinions, Stevens wrote that his approach to interpreting the Constitution’s guarantee of liberty “is guided by history but not beholden to it.” He described his willingness to “protect some rights even if they have not already received uniform protection from the elected branches.” And crucially he argued that no method can separate the beliefs of individual judges from the work of the court. “It all depends on judges’ exercising careful, reasoned judgment,” Stevens wrote. “As it always has, and as it always will.” [ John Paul Stevens has died. Read our obituary here. ] Clues to how Stevens arrived at that conclusion are sprinkled through “The Making of a Justice,” but only if you dig for them. Stevens’s new book (the third since his retirement in 2010) is more catalog than sustained argument. It suffers from the burden of completism and the frustration of muffled drama. In 1933, when Stevens was 12, his father was charged with embezzlement, and a group of armed robbers who thought he’d hidden $1 million in tomato cans burst into the family’s house one evening. But Stevens plays down the effects. “I do not recall any special fear for our safety during the ensuing months in that year,” he writes. Turning to his time as a justice, he devotes a chapter each to his 36 terms on the court. To follow the intellectual arc from one decision to a later one that relates to it, you have to read a lot of pages. Which, come to think of it, is probably what it feels like to do the work of a Supreme Court justice.