Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion in that case provided an example of how deeply divided the court was during those years on both methodology and outcomes. He complained that the 6-to-3 majority had simply enshrined its own views as constitutional law. “The arrogance of this assumption of power takes one’s breath away,” Justice Scalia wrote.

Two years before that, Justice Stevens had his own turn at a bitter dissent, in Bush v. Gore, the case that effectively decided the 2000 presidential election by stopping the Florida recount. Justice Stevens, one of four dissenters, said the court’s action “can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land.”

He said that although the actual winner of the presidential election might remain unknown, “the identity of the loser is perfectly clear”: It was “the nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”

A Slightly Quirky Loner

As the senior associate justice, with the power to assign majority opinions whenever he was in the majority and the chief justice was in dissent, Justice Stevens was the field marshal for a series of decisions that achieved liberal victories late in Chief Justice Rehnquist’s tenure. He assigned opinions to others in favor of gay rights and affirmative action and kept for himself decisions that upheld the authority of the federal government in the face of what had appeared to be the unstoppable states’-rights tilt of the Rehnquist court’s federalism revolution.

[5 Ways John Paul Stevens Made a Mark on the Supreme Court]

Until this final period, Justice Stevens had been known to the public, if at all, primarily for the jaunty bow ties he usually wore. His reputation was that of a very smart, nonideological, slightly quirky loner who, if a case was decided by a vote of 8 to 1, was as likely as not to be the solitary dissenter, caring neither to lead nor to follow.

He became the senior associate justice in his 19th year on the court on the retirement of Justice Harry A. Blackmun in 1994. The role, which he appeared to enjoy, heightened his visibility and showed the world what his colleagues already knew: that he was actually a strategic thinker and canny tactician whose genial personality and impressive analytic power could forge a path that might have appeared blocked by the sheer arithmetic of a majority that was well to his right.