Breyer, who before becoming a judge was a chief adviser to the Senate Judiciary Committee, knows better than anyone how last week’s surprise election in Georgia transformed Biden’s prospects of fulfilling a progressive judicial agenda.
Still, a Biden choice would increase the bench’s diversity and youth and open a new chapter for judges who have the last word on issues ranging from abortion and LGBTQ rights, religious freedoms and racial remedies, to federal power and regulation. corporate.
President-elect Biden has promised to nominate the first black woman for the bank. When he initially made the promise during a February 2020 debate in Charleston, he said, “I am looking forward to ensuring that there is a black woman on the Supreme Court, to making sure that we do have all the representations.”
Among those candidates could be US district court judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, 50, in Washington, DC, a former court clerk Breyer. Another possibility would be California Supreme Court Judge Leondra Kruger, 44. Other black women from different backgrounds would undoubtedly be in the mix if a vacancy arose.
Breyer, appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, declined to answer questions related to any retirement plans.
Breyer is known for many off-the-bench activities, including an enthusiasm for architecture, and he is the author of several books related to laws and regulations. These outside interests, along with the new democratic dynamics in the country’s capital, may prompt you to step down, perhaps already this summer, when the current 2020-21 session ends.
His new book to be published this year, “Against Segregation in America’s Schools”, could be his farewell. He explores the reduction of school integration today and is linked to one of Breyer’s main views for leftist judges.
Breyer is aware of the policy of judicial confirmations and the risky calculations involved in retirement decisions. In the 1970s, he was principal attorney for Massachusetts Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Breyer’s departure this year would lead to the first successful Democratic nomination since 2010, when the Senate confirmed President Barack Obama’s nominee, Elena Kagan.
Judges have a lifelong seat and, long after a president leaves office, his legacy and priorities live by law.
Trump’s three judges represented a significant achievement, especially for a single-term president. But Neil Gorsuch’s 2017 nomination was only possible because the Republican-led Senate refused to consider Obama’s 2016 Merrick Garland nomination to replace the late judge Antonin Scalia.
The Scalia / Garland fight in the Senate was the first in a series of contentious succession battles in the nine-member bank that culminated in October with the appointment of Trump by Judge Amy Coney Barrett to succeed liberal pioneer Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
In addition to Barrett and Gorsuch, Trump appointed Judge Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. The other Republican nominees are President Roberts and Judges Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. The third Democratic nominee, with Breyer and Kagan, is Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
“So tell me who the president could have appointed this spring that you would rather see in court than me?” she said in an interview in 2014, evoking the complicated policy already underway in Obama’s second term. She died on September 18, four months before the end of Trump’s term.
Biden will separately fill dozens of appointments to lower courts in the next four years, including the vacancy that would occur with Garland’s departure from the DC Circuit. This bench is often called the “second highest court” in the country because of its important processes for testing government powers.
Biden’s appointment would not alter the bench’s ideological or political character, but would increase its diversity. Thomas is currently the only black member of the court; Justice Sotomayor was the first Latin judge appointed.
The average age of current judges is 63; the three youngest and those with the potential to influence the law more in the coming decades are Gorsuch, 53, Kavanaugh, 55, and Barrett, 48.
Biden was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee when Breyer was chief lawyer. Biden later became chairman of the committee and in 1994 supervised Breyer’s confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court.
Biden referred to this service when he opened the session almost 27 years ago, and Breyer responded in kind: “Working here on this committee in the 1970s, I learned a lot about Congress, about government and about political life.”