Breyers Supreme Court tenure followed a center-left path, in two charts
Regardless of which jurist President Biden picks to fill the Supreme Court seat Justice Stephen G. Breyer plans to vacate this summer, the court will retain its six-seat conservative majority. But the decision, one of the most consequential a president can make, offers Biden an opportunity to give someone of his ideological choosing a lifetime appointment on the nation’s highest court.
Breyer has followed a center-left ideology during nearly three decades on the court, according to a measure of voting records called Martin-Quinn scores. The scores place Supreme Court justices on a left-right scale based on how often they vote with each other.
Breyer was a consistent liberal vote on issues like abortion rights, the environment and health-care coverage. He drifted slightly left during his tenure, according to the measure. The court’s conservative majority, recently bolstered by three Trump appointments, has been a constant during Breyer’s time on the bench.
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Breyer “is a pragmatist who believes deeply that our Constitution and our government should work for the American people, and those beliefs in turn have shaped the way he thinks about the role of the courts in our system of government,” Brianne Gorod, a former law clerk to Breyer and now chief counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, said in a statement Wednesday.
Republicans, who jammed through a third conservative Trump justice just eight days before the 2020 election, over the objections of Democrats and the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, are demanding that Biden nominate a centrist to replace Breyer. They appear powerless to block Biden’s pick in a Senate split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats, with Vice President Harris as the tiebreaking vote.
Biden has set a historic benchmark for his eventual pick, promising during his campaign and recommitting Thursday to nominate the first Black woman to the bench. Where the next Supreme Court justice will fall ideologically is less apparent. He said he will nominate a candidate by the end of February.
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