WASHINGTON — Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired from the Supreme Court in 2010 and died on Tuesday at 99, was the last of a breed. He was chosen for his ability as a lawyer and not, as is common today, for how he was likely to vote in ideologically charged cases. In picking him in 1975, President Gerald R. Ford, a Republican, said all he wanted was “the finest legal mind I could find.”

Justice Stevens was confirmed 19 days after his nomination, by a unanimous vote. Though Roe v. Wade had established a constitutional right to abortion only two years earlier, no senator asked him about the decision during his confirmation hearings, which were the last not to be broadcast live on television.

Three decades later, Ford expressed satisfaction with his choice, who had by then emerged as the leader of the court’s liberal wing.

[Justice John Paul Stevens, who led the Supreme Court’s liberal wing, dies at 99.]

“I am prepared,” Ford wrote, “to allow history’s judgment of my term in office to rest (if necessarily, exclusively) on my nomination 30 years ago of Justice John Paul Stevens to the U.S. Supreme Court.”