Ex-US justice Stephen Breyer signals support for supreme court term limits
Former US supreme court justice Stephen Breyer signaled his support for term limits in the country’s highest court following his retirement in 2022.
In a new interview on Sunday with NBC’s Meet the Press, 85-year-old Breyer said: “I don’t think that’s harmful,” adding: “If you had long terms, for example, they’d have to be long. Why long? Because I don’t think you want someone who’s appointed to the supreme court to be thinking about his next job.”
“And so, a 20-year term? I don’t know. 18? Long-term? Fine.” Breyer continued. “I don’t think that would be harmful. I think it would have helped in my case. It would have avoided, for me, going through difficult decisions when you retire. What’s the right time?” the liberal justice said.
Breyer was nominated to the court by Bill Clinton in 1994 and has more than 20 years of a moderate and pragmatic track record of interpreting the constitution.
In 2021, a group of legal scholars published a letter calling for Breyer to step down from his position, allowing Joe Biden to “nominate a successor without delay”, the scholars said. Following his retirement announcement in 2022, Breyer’s brother told the Washington Post that Breyer “did not want to die on the bench”.
Breyer was replaced by liberal justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden nominee and the first Black woman appointed to the court.
Discussing his criticisms of textualism over pragmatism, Breyer said in Sunday’s wide-ranging interview that he understands that a textualist interpretation is “attractive” and will “stop the judges from doing what they want”.
However, Breyer said that “it doesn’t work very well, in my opinion.”
“Go back to 1788, ’89, ’87. Go back even to just after the civil war, when we have the 13th, 14th, 15th amendment … There were about half the population of this country that really weren’t represented in the political process, right? But they’re now part of the political process, as they should be,” he said.
“You want to just go back to what people were thinking at that time? I’m not sure just what they were thinking at that time … but I do suspect … the fact that half the people in this country were not involved in the political process. They were supposed to stay home. And there were some that were enslaved. And we understand that. So, that’s one of the problems with just looking back into history,” he added.
Breyer, a supporter of reproductive rights, also touched on the 2022 supreme court leak ahead of the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling which overturned abortion rights across the country.
“I think it was unfortunate,” said Breyer, adding: “You try to avoid getting angry … You try in the job … to remain as calm, reasonable and serious as possible. I think it was unfortunate.”
When asked whether he thinks a compromise in the 6-3 conservative majority court would have been possible before the leak, Breyer replied: “I usually hope for compromise.”
He continued: “I always think it’s possible. I always think it’s possible, usually up until the last minute.”
Breyer also said that he does have his “theories” on who was responsible for the leak. “I’d be amazed if it was a judge,” he said.
During the interview, Breyer also appeared to skirt around a question regarding the supreme court’s decision to hear Donald Trump’s presidential immunity claim over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Breyer, who said he did not have enough information, replied: “My goodness, you can make mistakes just by saying what your initial opinion is. And my goodness, how often it really occurs … I’m not just trying to get out of the question, because I can get out of the question by just saying I’m not going to answer the question.”