U.S. Justice Breyer fortified abortion rights, doubted death penalty
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[January 27, 2022]
By Lawrence Hurley
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Supreme Court
Justice Stephen Breyer has authored pivotal rulings bolstering abortion
rights and safeguarding a landmark healthcare law while questioning the
death penalty during 27 years as a liberal on a bench often dominated by
conservatives.
Breyer, who U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday said would retire at the end of
the court's current term, will leave a legacy as a moderating influence
and a pragmatist on a court that has moved rightward during his tenure
and currently has a commanding 6-3 conservative majority. At age 83,
Breyer is the oldest of the current justices on the top U.S. judicial
body.
He was appointed to the lifetime job in 1994 by Democratic President
Bill Clinton. Only conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, who joined the
court in 1991, has served longer among its current members. Breyer's
retirement will not alter the court's ideological balance but will give
Democratic President Joe Biden the chance to name a liberal replacement
young enough to serve for decades.
In a speech last year, Breyer expressed faith in the court as an
institution and defended it against accusations that its rightward shift
had rendered it more politicized. Breyer noted among other things that
the justices had turned away former President Donald Trump's efforts,
based on false claims of widespread voting fraud, to overturn his 2020
election loss.
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"These considerations convince me that it is wrong to think of the court
as another political institution," Breyer said.
The court's conservatives have become increasingly bold during its
current nine-month term, with rulings due by the end of June that could
gut abortion rights and widen gun rights.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, called Breyer a "model
jurist" who "embodies the best qualities and highest ideals of American
justice: knowledge, wisdom, fairness, humility, restraint." Senate
Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, a Democrat, praised Breyer as
"a trusted voice on the bench with a first-rate legal mind." Republican
Senator Lindsey Graham added, "He has always been a scholar and a
gentleman whose record on the Supreme Court is solidly in the liberal
camp."
As a member of the court's liberal wing, Breyer helped advance LGBT
rights including joining the landmark 2015 decision legalizing gay
marriage nationwide and the 2020 decision protecting gay and transgender
employees from workplace discrimination.
Breyer authored two high-profile rulings defending abortion rights. In
one of them, the court in 2016, on a 5-3 vote, struck down a
Republican-backed Texas law that sought to impose restrictions on
clinics and doctors who perform abortions, provisions that had caused
some clinics to close. The other one, a 5-4 decision in 2020, struck
down a Republican-backed Louisiana law with similar physician
restrictions.
Breyer last year authored a ruling rejecting a Republican bid to
invalidate the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama's
signature domestic policy achievement that has helped millions of
Americans obtain healthcare coverage. The 7-2 ruling preserved the law,
dubbed Obamacare, for the third time since its 2010 enactment.
Breyer also wrote a ruling last year in a major free speech case that
sided with a cheerleader who had been punished by her high school for a
profanity-laced social media post.
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Liberal activists had urged Breyer to retire before Republicans
could regain control of the Senate and thus block his replacement.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Jan/27/images/ads/current/stclara_lda_SPONSOR_090519.png) 'CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT'
In 2015, Breyer questioned capital punishment's constitutionality.
In a 41-page dissent joined by fellow liberal Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, Breyer wrote that "the death penalty, in and of itself,
now likely constitutes a legally prohibited cruel and unusual
punishment" under the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment.
Breyer said innocent people have been put the death, capital
punishment has been marred by racial discrimination and politics,
its use varies wildly from place to place, there have been
excessively long delays between sentencing and execution and it has
been imposed arbitrarily.
Breyer dissented in major victories for the court's conservatives
such as the 2000 ruling that halted ballot recounts in Florida,
effectively handing the U.S. presidency to Republican George W. Bush
over Democrat Al Gore after a disputed election.
He pursued compromises when possible.
Breyer was the swing vote when the court in 2005 ruled on a pair of
cases questioning whether religious displays on public property
violated the Constitution's First Amendment, which bars governmental
endorsement of religion. Breyer was the only justice in the majority
in both. The justices allowed a large monument of the biblical Ten
Commandments on the grounds of the Texas Capitol but found that
framed copies of the Ten Commandments could not be displayed inside
two Kentucky courthouses.
Questioned last year during a session with school students about
U.S. political fractures and polarization, Breyer said he remains
"basically optimistic ." For all of its flaws, Breyer said, American
democracy is, on balance, "better than the alternatives."
Breyer replaced liberal Justice Harry Blackmun on the court,
securing Senate confirmation on an 87-9 vote. Breyer previously had
been appointed in 1980 by Democratic President Jimmy Carter to the
Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Breyer was born in San Francisco on Aug. 15, 1938. He graduated from
Stanford University in 1959 and two years later earned a degree from
the University of Oxford. He graduated in 1964 from Harvard Law
School, where he later served as a professor and lecturer.
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He got his first taste of the Supreme Court as a clerk for Justice
Arthur Goldberg. After a stint in the Justice Department's antitrust
division, he worked under his former professor Archibald Cox,
special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal that led President
Richard Nixon to resign in 1974. Breyer also served as an aide to
Massachusetts Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy.
Breyer married Joanna Hare, the British-born daughter of Lord John
Blakenham, a former Cabinet minister and member of Britain's House
of Lords. They had three children.
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)
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