Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens dies at 99

Former Justice John Paul Stevens, who was long a pillar on the Supreme Court's liberal wing, died on Tuesday in a Florida hospital at age 99.

Stevens retired from the court in 2010 and was replaced by Justice Elena Kagan. After his retirement, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

He was appointed to the high court by President Gerald Ford in 1975.

Even in retirement, Stevens still remained somewhat in the public eye. As recently as May, he voiced criticism of the direction President Donald Trump was taking the country.

“I think there are things we should be concerned about, there’s no doubt about that,” Stevens said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “The president is exercising powers that do not really belong to him. I mean, he has to comply with subpoenas and things like that.”

And after Brett Kavanaugh gave an angry and combative performance during his own confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court in the fall of 2018, Stevens said the then-nominee's behavior should disqualify him.

“The senators should pay attention to this,” Stevens said.

In response to the devastating 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Stevens spoke out in favor of repealing the Second Amendment to allow the government to strengthen gun laws.

“Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides that ‘a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed,'” Stevens wrote in a New York Times op-ed. “Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.”