Justice Breyer to Retire

Posted January 26, 2022, 12:31 p.m.
Updated January 26, 2022, 1:36 p.m.

Justice Stephen Breyer

United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has announced that he plans to retire at the end of the court’s current term.

Breyer was appointed by President Bill Clinton (D) in 1994 after Justice Harry Blackmun’s retirement. He was confirmed by a 87-9 vote in the United States Senate. Breyer is regarded as part of the “liberal” wing of the court and has tended to follow the “living constitution” school of jurisprudence.

President Joe Biden (D) has the constitutional authority to nominate a replacement for Breyer, and that nomination must be confirmed by the Senate. Biden is likely to appoint another “liberal,” so Breyer’s retirement is unlikely to result in significant changes to the ideological balance of the court.

Biden has promised to nominate a black woman to the court. In the public and private sectors it is usually illegal to hire on the basis of race or sex, but antidiscrimination laws do not apply to presidential appointments.

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

The Constitution does not prohibit legislatures from enacting stupid laws.

Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we who teach shall be judged with greater strictness.

You simply cannot invent any conspiracy theory so ridiculous and obviously satirical that some people somewhere don’t already believe it.

Democratic governments may become violent and even cruel at certain periods of extreme effervescence or of great danger: but these crises will be rare and brief.

[Groos] well says that children are young because they play, and not vice versa; and he might have added, men grow old because they stop playing, and not conversely. . . .

Superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion.

Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.

Most men are not untrue, but they are afraid. Most of the errors of public life . . . come not because men are morally bad, but because they are afraid of somebody.

Those who understand freedom as the radically arbitrary license to do just what they want and to have their own way are living in a lie, for by his very nature man is part of a shared existence and his freedom is shared freedom.

The revolution of the United States was the result of a mature and dignified taste for freedom, and not of a vague or ill-defined craving for independence.

I look very much forward to showing my financials. Because they are huge.

I wasn’t a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn’t spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation—from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries.

The right of a nation to kill a tyrant, in cases of necessity, can no more be doubted, than to hang a robber, or kill a flea. But killing one tyrant only makes way for worse, unless the people have sense, spirit, and honesty enough to establish and support a constitution guarded at all points against the tyranny of the one, the few, and the many.

Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. . . .

As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

Be united to Christ in order to purify yourself, and together with him experience the insults, the spit, the blows and the thorns. . . .

When one has had all his conceit taken out of him, when he has lost all his illusions, his feathers will soon soak through, and he will fly no more.

Winning ain’t enough. The other guy has to know he lost.

If you wish to attain holy recollection, you will do so not by receiving but by denying.

Now anything the people demand that is right it is most clearly and most emphatically the duty of this Legislature to do; but we should never yield to what they demand if it is wrong.