Retired Justice John Paul Stevens is lambasting the Supreme Court’s 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller decision broadening gun rights, calling it the “most clearly incorrect” ruling of his 35-year career on the high court.
“Heller is unquestionably the most clearly incorrect decision that the court announced during my tenure on the bench,” Stevens, 99, wrote in his new memoir, The Making of a Justice.
The retired justice penned the main dissent in the Heller case, which established the right to keep guns for self-defense in the home. Joining Stevens’ dissent were Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer.
The court divided along ideological lines in the case, with Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote, siding with the conservative wing of the bench in striking down the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns.
“Their twin failure in that case — first, the misreading of the intended meaning of the Second Amendment, and second, the failure to respect settled precedent — represent the worst self-inflicted wound in the court’s history,” Stevens wrote of the majority. “They also represent the most disappointing task on which I worked as a member of the court.”
In addition to voicing his discontent with the Heller decision, Stevens also revealed in his book the internal deliberations that took place following the March 2008 oral arguments in the case.
Stevens said he believed Kennedy or Justice Clarence Thomas could have been persuaded to change their votes, and he had discussions with both in hopes of convincing them to do so.
Stevens also took the unusual step of circulating his draft dissent five weeks before the late Justice Antonin Scalia circulated the majority opinion.
In a memo accompanying his draft dissent, Stevens said he decided to share it with his fellow justices “because I fear the members of the majority have not yet adequately considered the unusual importance of their decision.”
“Because there is still time to avoid a serious and totally unnecessary self-inflicted wound, I urge each of the members of the majority to give careful consideration to the impact of this decision on the future of this institution when weighing the strength of the arguments I have set forth in what I hope will not be a dissent,” Stevens wrote in his memo to his colleagues.
Stevens was ultimately not able to persuade Thomas and Kennedy to change their votes, and he lamented that he “failed to emphasize sufficiently the human aspects of the issue” to Kennedy.
Still, the retired justice wrote that his early discussions with Kennedy, who retired last year, “may have contributed to his insisting on some important changes before signing on to the court’s opinion.”
Stevens retired from the Supreme Court in 2010, and since then, he has not hidden his distaste for the Heller decision.
In March 2018, he called for a repeal of the Second Amendment in an op-ed for the New York Times and has also advocated for a constitutional amendment to overrule the 2008 decision.
Stevens has also lamented that lawmakers have failed to implement more stringent gun control measures.
