Justice Stephen Breyer Is Not Planning to Retire — Yet

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer Official Portrait (Wikipedia)

Stephen Breyer, the U.S. Supreme Court Justice, says that he has no plans at the moment to retire from the bench. This is in spite of calls by many liberals that the 82 year old Judge Breyer should step aside now, while the Democrats control both the U.S. Senate and the White House. Justice Stephen Breyer made the revelation in an interview with CNN.

Justice Breyer is the second longest serving member of the U.S. Supreme Court, after Clarence Thomas. Judge Breyer was appointed by President Bill Clinton and took his seat on August 3, 1994. On August 15 this year Judge Breyer will turn 83 years old. And his age has liberals in America worried that should, God forbid, he be forced to step down after 2022, the Republicans might have a majority in the Senate. Republican Senator, and current Minority leader, Mitch McConnell has vowed that should his party retake the Senate in 2022, then they will not vote to confirm any court appointments made by President Biden.

In February 2016 Senator McConnell was the Senate Majority leader when conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died. At the time he refused to even consider then President Obama’s nominee, saying that it was too close to a Presidential election to allow the outgoing President the opportunity to change the court. But more than four years later, in September 2020 just two months before a Presidential election, McConnell pushed through Republican President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who had passed away.

Justice Stephen Breyer told CNN in an interview that only two factors would affect his decision on retirement, “primarily, of course, health,” and “second, the court.”

Stephen G. Breyer, Associate Justice, was born in San Francisco, California, August 15, 1938. He married Joanna Hare in 1967, and has three children – Chloe, Nell, and Michael. He received an A.B. from Stanford University, a B.A. from Magdalen College, Oxford, and an LL.B. from Harvard Law School. He served as a law clerk to Justice Arthur Goldberg of the Supreme Court of the United States during the 1964 Term, as a Special Assistant to the Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Antitrust, 1965–1967, as an Assistant Special Prosecutor of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, 1973, as Special Counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, 1974–1975, and as Chief Counsel of the committee, 1979–1980. He was an Assistant Professor, Professor of Law, and Lecturer at Harvard Law School, 1967–1994, a Professor at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, 1977–1980, and a Visiting Professor at the College of Law, Sydney, Australia and at the University of Rome. From 1980–1990, he served as a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and as its Chief Judge, 1990–1994. He also served as a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States, 1990–1994, and of the United States Sentencing Commission, 1985–1989.