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January 27, 2022

 

 

 

 

Stephen Collinson and Shelby Rose

Joe Biden and the Supremes

 

Stephen Breyer participates in a panel at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC, on April 21, 2014.

There's nothing quite like the Washington thunderclap caused by a Supreme Court seat falling open.

It was just before noon ET on Wednesday when news broke that Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, the longest-serving liberal on the bench, plans to retire. The first reaction from most Democrats was not to offer thanks for years of yeoman service. Instead, there was a massive sigh of relief.

 

Liberals were petrified that if Breyer didn't step down this year, Democrats could lose the chance to confirm a replacement if the party loses the Senate in November's midterm elections. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the chamber, notoriously refused to even hold a hearing on President Barack Obama's final pick to the court in 2016.

 

It's highly likely the shrewd Kentuckian would invent another precedent to do the same to President Joe Biden if Republicans win back control of the Senate. Democrats are already looking at future years of blows inflicted by a 6-3 conservative court majority on issues like abortion, guns and climate regulation. A potential 7-2 margin -- with a young conservative nominee from a possible GOP President after 2024 -- would mean decades in the wilderness.

 

Democrats were right to be concerned. Liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was in failing health for years but declined to retire, died weeks before the 2020 presidential election. McConnell rushed through then-President Donald Trump's replacement, Amy Coney Barrett, cementing an unassailable conservative majority with her lifetime appointment.

A liberal, pragmatic legacy 

President Bill Clinton formally nominates Judge Stephen Breyer to the Supreme Court on May 16, 1994.

 

The Supreme Court is one of the three branches of government. Its role is to consider the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress and to interpret existing statutes as it wrestles with some of the most divisive social, commercial, electoral, religious and criminal law issues in the United States.

In many ways, Breyer, a temperate liberal, is a throwback to an earlier era before the vicious political polarization that has gripped America in recent years - and as we reported in Meanwhile on Wednesday, has now infected the Supreme Court, which once considered itself above grubby politics.

Breyer has been supportive of women's right to choose to have an abortion, and has sometimes questioned the constitutionality of the death penalty. He helped advance LGBTQ rights and protected Obama's signature health care law. But he will also be remembered as a pragmatist and sometimes sought to build coalitions with some of the conservative justices on the bench.

 

Given the hyperpolitical times and the way radical conservatives made constructing a right-wing Supreme Court majority their movement's chief goal, Breyer's replacement is likely to be more openly progressive.

 

Biden's nominee is also fated to spend long years in the minority, an ordeal that may tempt the new justice to drag the liberal wing farther to the left and to make a mark in the only way possible -- with stinging dissents.

A political opening for Biden

Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, then-Vice President Joe Biden and first lady Michelle Obama smile as President Barack Obama speaks at the White House in May 2010.  

 

Some progressives have been agitating for Breyer to go for months -- in fact they've been so vocal that some Democrats feared they might offend the venerable jurist and convince him to stay put.

 

The opening is a huge political opportunity for Biden and could give the Democrats a desperately needed rallying point in a tough year after being at loggerheads over their agenda on Capitol Hill.

 

The President has already indicated he'll make history by nominating the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. Such a pick might galvanize critical Black turnout in November's midterm elections in key states and go some way to assuaging disappointment at the President's failure to enact police and voting rights reform owing to razor-thin Democratic majorities and Republican obstruction.

 

A Supreme Court battle might even get Democratic progressives and moderates on the same page for once. Still, no nominee is assured of a spot on the court, and Republicans will mount a campaign to brand Biden's pick as an extreme liberal and to deny him a political payoff. An untimely death or illness in the aged Democratic ranks in the 50-50 Senate could also strip the party of its majority and throw the nomination into doubt.

But the chances are that Biden will get to put his stamp on this crucial and powerful branch of the American government and even set the tone for a long, grueling march for liberals back to parity on the court.

 

The world and America

The US delivers written responses to Russia's demands

 

Could China's Olympics influence Russia's Ukraine gambit?

 

A Covid-stricken ship heads for Tonga

 

US-backed forces recapture a Syrian prison attacked by ISIS

 

Meanwhile in America ... Prince Andrew denies sexual abuse allegations

 

Melania Trump's auction didn't go well

 

Boeing losses soar amid Dreamliner problems

 

Thanks for reading.

On Thursday, US Vice President Kamala Harris leads the US presidential delegation attending the inauguration of Honduras President-elect Xiomara Castro, the country's first female president. The United Nations Holocaust Memorial Ceremony takes place virtually from the U.N. The United Kingdom lifts Omicron measures. 

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