Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, 93, seemed to express sympathy in 2000 for elements of a controversial GOP-backed legal theory that would recognize state legislatures’ power to regulate federal elections without interference from state courts, according to the recently unveiled papers of the late Justice John Paul Stevens.
Then-President Gerald Ford appointed Stevens, a liberal jurist, to the Supreme Court in 1975. Stevens retired from the court in 2010 and died in 2019 at the age of 99. The Library of Congress has made a trove of documents from his time on the court available for public research.
