A wide-ranging selection of papers that belonged to Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is opening to researchers Tuesday at the Library of Congress, providing a behind-the-scenes look at the justices’ deliberations in important cases including Bush v. Gore, the 2000 decision that essentially decided the presidential election.

Stevens, who died in 2019, served on the Supreme Court for nearly 35 years. In that time, the court decided cases on issues including abortion, affirmative action, presidential power, gun rights and the rights of prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention center. The papers being made public contain Stevens’ notes from the justices’ private conferences about cases, drafts of opinions and communications between the justices.

The collection’s opening comes as the current court has recently ruled or is weighing some of the same major issues. Last year, the court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade, giving states the ability to ban abortion after nearly 50 years. Now, the justices are deciding whether to do away with affirmative action, which has been upheld under Supreme Court decisions reaching back to 1978. An affirmative action decision is expected before the end of June, when the court traditionally finishes its work before taking a summer break.

Stevens was appointed to the court in 1975 by Republican President Gerald Ford and at first was considered a centrist, but he came to be seen as the court’s leading liberal. Stevens said that he hadn’t changed but that the court had grown more conservative around him. He did change his views on some issues, however. He morphed from a critic of affirmative action to a supporter, and he came to believe the death penalty is wrong.

The court has only become more conservative since Stevens’ departure. Six of the court’s nine members are conservatives, and the other three are liberals.

In Bush v. Gore, the case that ended Florida’s presidential recount and sent Republican George W. Bush to the White House over Democrat Al Gore, Stevens wrote a scathing dissent.