Justice Stephen Breyer retires from the Supreme Court of the United States, leaving an opening for a new justice to be appointed.. // Photo courtesy of Steve Petteway and the Collection of the Supreme Court of the U..S.
Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement from the Supreme Court on Thursday, Jan. 27. President Joe Biden immediately addressed the nation regarding Breyer’s retirement with a press conference.
Breyer’s retirement announcement did not come as a shock to the legal field, as Breyer stated that he didn’t “want to stay on the Court until [he] die[s],” in an NPR interview.
“All that’s going to happen, assuming that President Biden’s nominee gets confirmed, is one liberal justice will be replaced with another liberal justice,” said William Schaefer, a political science professor at Hofstra University. “If Justice Breyer were to have passed or retired if the Democrats lost control of the Senate, then they would not be able to get their replacement.”
With Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death resulting in a conservative replacement, there was pressure from social activists for Breyer to step down while Democrats control the Senate and can appoint someone before the upcoming midterm elections this November, according to Katie Rogers and Charlie Savage from the New York Times.
“So many people were leaning on Justice Breyer to retire given that there’s such a huge possibility that the Senate is not going to be in the hands of Democrats next time,” said Hofstra political science professor Rosanna Perotti.
This vacancy will give Biden his first Supreme Court justice pick, and the opportunity to make good on his campaign promise of appointing the first ever Black woman.
“The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity, and that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court,” Biden said in the press conference.
“If an African American woman is appointed to the Court, that is still a big deal for America, and still a monumental thing to happen, even if it doesn’t change the amount of liberal votes on the Court,” said Caleb Rockhill, a sophomore political science, rhetoric and public advocacy major.
Darian Rodriguez, a freshman political science and contemporary issues in law, ethics and politics double major, highlighted the significance of having a person of minority background go up for nomination for the highest court of the land.
“It shows how we’re moving forward as a country,” Rodriguez said. “Now we have people [who are] minorities that [are elected] to the Supreme Court and it’s not something controversial, it’s not something that’s going to blow this world up.”
Hofstra students support having a diverse Supreme Court in the coming months.
“I think having a more diverse Supreme Court is very important, having different experiences, different beliefs and different ideologies,” said Fatima Kasher, a freshman political science major. “That’s really important because that represents what America is as a whole. Having a more diverse court definitely enhances what America is all about.”
Some of Breyer’s most famous moments on the bench include authoring a majority opinion protecting abortion rights against a Nebraska law in 2000, casting the decisive vote in the 2005 opinion for the Ten Commandments case in Texas and writing a dissenting opinion about how unconstitutional he believes the death penalty is.
Eighty-three-year-old Breyer has served on the court for nearly three decades. He was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter. Fourteen years later, President Bill Clinton appointed Breyer to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1994.
