Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens names 3 decisions he believes were 'grave errors'

John Paul Stevens.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens turns 99 in April, and he is preparing to release a memoir of his first 94 years. In a Monday interview with The New York Times about the forthcoming work, Stevens reminisced on his 35-year SCOTUS tenure, naming three decisions he considered "grave errors" of his time.

The worst decision of the lot, Stevens said, was 2008's District of Columbia v. Heller, which affirmed a Second Amendment right to individual gun ownership, striking down the District of Columbia's handgun ban.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.