Justice Breyer, under pressure from left to retire, takes the long view

The pressure campaign started months ago. Outside the US Supreme Court in April, a billboard truck with a black-and-white image of 82-year-old Justice Stephen G. Breyer circled the grounds, neon green letters blaring, “Breyer, retire.”

That unsubtle message, paid for by a progressive group, has been adopted by liberal law professors and politicians, fueled further by the renewed threats by Republicans to block President Biden from appointing a Supreme Court justice.

If anyone is built to withstand the pressure, it is Breyer, who has given no indication he plans to retire when the Supreme Court’s term ends in the next few weeks. The senior member of the court’s shrinking liberal minority, Breyer railed against public misperceptions of justices as “junior level politicians” just this past April during a two-hour lecture at Harvard Law School, and has expressed a deep fear that the nation’s highest court could lose public trust if its members are seen to be guided by politics.

Nonetheless, the pragmatic and likable jurist, who has written more than half a dozen books on the preservation of democracy and the rule of law, is faced with the very high stakes and hyperpolitical moment he has long sought to remain above.

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