EXCLUSIVE: Supreme Court Justice Stevens Remembers President Ford

WASHINGTON, Jan. 2, 2007 — -- Today Justice John Paul Stevens remembered the president who nominated him to the Supreme Court more than three decades ago, a decision that changed Stevens' life and the makeup of the Court.

In his only network TV interview, Stevens recalled meeting President Ford for the first time. "My two very firm impressions from that meeting were, one, he was a fine lawyer; and two, he was the kind of person I would really like to have as a friend, because you like him right away."

Nominating Stevens is one of Ford's most enduring legacies. Although Stevens is a maverick thinker who has proved to be surprisingly liberal and has kept the Court from moving further to the right, the justice said today he still considered himself a conservative.

"I don't really think I've changed. I think there have been a lot of changes in the Court," said the 86-year-old justice. "I can see myself as a conservative, to tell you the truth, a judicial conservative."

In a tribute last year, Ford praised the independent Stevens and said he was "prepared to allow history's judgment of my term in office" to rest exclusively on the nomination.

Ford said he agreed with Stevens' views on the separation of church and state, and on requiring rigorous procedural safeguards for criminal defendants.

Ford nominated Stevens to the Supreme Court in 1975, when he was a Chicago-based federal appeals court judge, to replace liberal giant William O. Douglas.

Douglas had suffered a debilitating stroke in 1974, and he submitted his resignation letter to Ford the next year with great reluctance -- and only after concerned colleagues on the Court had urged him to do so.

Ironically, Ford had tried to get Douglas off the Court five years earlier when, as House minority leader, Ford led the call for Douglas' impeachment, largely because of his liberal ideology and sensational personal life.

Douglas had raised eyebrows in Washington for years, and he'd just married his fourth wife, who was 44 years his junior.