Opinion: Stephen Breyer is delusional about the Supreme Court – By Ryan Cooper (The Week) / May 19 2021
President Biden has a very narrow path to get his big legislative plans through Congress. Democrats can lose only a few votes in the House and none at all in the Senate, and only then if they go through the budget reconciliation process or decide to reform the filibuster. But the greatest threat to his agenda is only now beginning to stir — the reactionary Supreme Court majority.
The court recently further eroded habeas corpus rights for criminal defendants, and has accepted new cases that may basically allow abortion bans at the state level and may invent a constitutional right to carry a concealed weapon in every state. Should Biden get his programs passed, there is a strong possibility they will be struck down or weakened by the court.
Worse, all too many liberals are in deep denial about the nature of this threat. One of them is on the Supreme Court himself: Justice Stephen Breyer, who is 82 years old yet thus far refuses to retire — as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg refused to in 2013, which ended up handing her seat to to the right-wing ideologue Amy Coney Barrett.
Breyer is reportedly worried that retiring so he will be replaced by a liberal would introduce politics (heaven forfend!) into the court, and that would threaten its power and legitimacy. In a recent speech at Harvard Law School, he argued: “My experience of more than 30 years as a judge has shown me that, once men and women take the judicial oath, they take the oath to heart … They are loyal to the rule of law, not to the political party that helped to secure their appointment.”
CONTINUE > https://theweek.com/articles/983261/stephen-breyer-delusional-about-supreme-court
