Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has plans to retire but not anytime soon.
“Eventually I’ll retire, sure I will,” he told Slate in a wide-ranging interview. “And it’s hard to know exactly when.”
Breyer’s comment came after he was asked if he supports judicial term limits, especially as confirmation battles for judges became increasingly contentious throughout President Trump’s tenure. Breyer, in the past, has supported 18-year term limits, joking in 2016 that such an arrangement would “make my life simpler.”
But when faced with questions about his thoughts on term limits in 2020, Breyer waved off answering as too “politically controversial.” At 82 years of age, Breyer is the oldest justice by nearly a decade.
Following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who famously shut down President Barack Obama’s attempts to make her retire, Breyer began facing an uptick in suggestions from the Left that he consider his own retirement.
During an October Q&A hosted by the Edward M. Kennedy Institute, Breyer said that all justices think about whether they will retire or die in office, which is, in his view, just part of the “aging process.”
But Breyer cautioned his audience that Supreme Court justices will not make a decision to step down based on political pressure.
“The more the political fray is hot and intense, the more we stay out of it,” Breyer said.
In May, several months before Ginsburg’s death, Breyer said that he does not think about retiring because “I enjoy what I’m doing.”
Ginsburg, who faced numerous cancer-related health scares over the past decade, died in September, paving the way for Trump to appoint Justice Amy Coney Barrett and swing the court definitively to the right. Ginsburg, in her final years, consistently resisted calls for her retirement, saying earlier this year that she would do the job “as long as I can do it full steam.”
