Stephen Breyer to retire from supreme court, giving Biden chance to pick liberal judge

Justice Stephen Breyer will retire from the supreme court, according to widespread media reporting on Wednesday, which, if confirmed by the court, will provide Joe Biden with the opportunity to fulfill a campaign pledge by nominating the first Black woman judge to the bench.

Such a choice would be a milestone and bolster the liberal wing of the bench, even as it weathers a dominant conservative super-majority achieved under the Trump administration.

California-born Breyer was nominated by Bill Clinton in 1994 and confirmed with strong bipartisan support in the Senate at the time.

But there were no denials from the White House or the court.

And on Wednesday evening, a CNN reporter said that Breyer and Biden were scheduled to make a public appearance on Thursday where the justice would formally announce his retirement, citing a source familiar with the matter.

Breyer is perhaps the least well-known of the current justices outside legal circles, chiefly because he is regarded as a pragmatist and has spent more than two decades at the moderate end of the liberal wing, actively eschewing partisanship.

Despite what had appeared to be resistance to pressure to retire quickly in the Biden administration, Breyer is calling it a day.

That happened with Ginsburg, who resisted years of such hints, including from Barack Obama when he was president, and outright lobbying.

Instead, the seat remained empty, Trump unexpectedly won the presidency and his first of three picks, Neil Gorsuch, joined the court in April 2017.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, had earlier this year written an opinion piece for the Washington Post calling on Breyer to retire sooner rather than later.

And he pointed to important positions taken by Breyer.

Breyer was born in San Francisco and raised in a Jewish family. He studied at Stanford University, Magdalen College, Oxford and Harvard Law.