In his new book, according to the National Law Journal’s Marcia Coyle, Justice Stevens levels strong criticism at the Supreme Court’s decision in Seminole Tribe v. Florida:

The tenor of the Court’s deliberations changed immediately when William Rehnquist became chief justice, according to Stevens. Rehnquist, he writes, was an impartial presiding officer and meticulous in noting the justices’ different positions on issues in each argued case. But Stevens levels some of the book’s sharpest criticism on Rehnquist’s decisions involving state sovereign immunity. Stevens considers the first in a line of 11th Amendment rulings — Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida — one of the Court’s worst rulings in his nearly 35 years. In an interview withThe National Law Journal, he explained that sovereign immunity is a “doctrine of injustice.”

And he calls the retirement of Thurgood Marshall, the “most significant judicial event” of Rehnquist’s tenure as chief, not only because of Marshall’s contributions to the Court’s conference but because of the changes in the Court’s jurisprudence attributable to the votes of his successor, Clarence Thomas.