Former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer stated Sunday that he supports age limitations for justices, noting that the contentious issue would have aided his own decision-making regarding his retirement in 2022.
“I don’t think that’s harmful,” he said of Supreme Court terms in an NBC “Meet the Press” interview with Kristen Welker on Sunday. “If you had long terms, for example, they’d have to be long. Why long? Because I don’t think you want someone who’s appointed to the Supreme Court to be thinking about his next job.”
“And so, a 20-year term? I don’t know, 18? Long term? Fine. Fine,” he said. “I don’t think that would be harmful. I think it would have helped, in my case. It would have avoided, for me, going through difficult decisions when you retire. What’s the right time? And so, that would be okay.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson succeeded Breyer, who retired from the Supreme Court in 2022 at the age of 85.
Court age limits and terms are once again at the forefront of debate, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor faces pressure from Democrats to retire due to health concerns and the uncertainty surrounding the 2024 election. Breyer and Sotomayor are liberal justices.
Breyer also refrained from commenting on recent Supreme Court cases concerning former President Trump’s legal issues, particularly the court’s denial of Trump’s 14th Amendment disqualification from the ballot and the ongoing case of whether he can face criminal charges for his actions on January 6.
“I won’t answer that. Why? Because I believe that one of the most awful things I could do is retire from the court and then sit here and criticize or not criticize certain cases,” he stated.
“I’m not in that position, unlike you. “You can do it,” he assured Welker. “But I believe that openly praising or blaming certain decisions that the court presently makes—you want to go ba—I can tell you, I can condemn some. Dred Scott was a poor decision, and Brown v. Board of Education was an excellent one. “We can travel back in time.”
“But I don’t think I can really go into discussing the merits of recent decisions,” he said.
The justice also avoided comments about the leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s ruling in the Dobbs abortion case in 2022, which he just labeled as “unfortunate,” declining to elaborate.
