Justice Breyer to Retire

Posted January 26, 2022, 12:31 p.m.
Updated May 6, 2024, 7:37 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 is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

Quotes

Platonists, Gnostics[,] and Hindus all believe that the soul is better without the body than with it. They are wrong. A human soul without a body is not a complete self . . .

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, [intelligence] is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

At any rate, while I am in public life, however short a time it may be, I am in honor bound to act up to my beliefs and convictions.

Every man of power by the very fact of that power, is capable of doing damage to his neighbors; but we cannot afford to discourage the development of such men merely because it is possible they may use their power for wrong ends.

The most durable monument of human labor is that which recalls the wretchedness and nothingness of man.

Don’t let your life be sterile. Be useful. Blaze a trail. Shine forth with the light of your faith and of your love.

Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.

Every one who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.

Evil can be eradicated from the world at large only when it is eradicated from the hearts and lives of individual human beings. Only when there is virtue in souls can there be peace and happiness in society.

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

I am dumbfounded at how little philosophical and metaphysical importance the human mind has attached to the vital subject of excrement.

Murder is sometimes punished, free speech always.

I have seizures of momentary sanity.

Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

From an economic standpoint, some education has great value, some has no value and some can even have a negative value.

I think there is always a need in any struggle for sensationalists. They get the headlines, they get the ear of the public, they take the race horse chances.

Human opinion can give only conflicting, contrary, and contradictory answers.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.