Justice Stephen Breyer warned Democrats to think “long and hard” before trying to expand the Supreme Court.
Breyer, speaking to students and faculty at Harvard Law School on Tuesday, said he sought “to make those whose initial instincts may favor important structural (or other similar institutional) changes, such as forms of ‘court-packing,’ think long and hard before embodying those changes in law.”
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Breyer, 82, in addition to being the oldest Supreme Court justice, is also a Harvard alumnus and former professor. His age, coupled with Democrats’ tenuous control of the government, in the past few months have prompted many liberal court activists to call for his retirement. Breyer did not address that concern in his remarks.
However, the justice did speak out against the popular notion that he and his colleagues make decisions with political motivations, saying that the high court is more than a group of “junior league politicians.” Breyer cited the conservative-dominated court’s successful resistance to former President Donald Trump’s calls for overturning the 2020 election as an example of this in action.
Breyer also pointed to the court’s 5-4 decision in a Louisiana abortion case, a decision that upset Trump and many anti-abortion advocates, as the body not being swayed by partisan politics.
Breyer historically has chafed at suggestions that the court is a political body. The justice, in December, told Slate that he plans to retire “eventually” but refused to wade into political questions about the future of the court.
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“The more the political fray is hot and intense, the more we stay out of it,” he said.
Calls for Breyer’s retirement, along with court-packing, have marked many left-leaning court advocates’ strategies since the sudden death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last year gave Trump the chance to cement a conservative majority on the court with the appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
