News broke on Wednesday that Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer plans to resign from his seat on the bench.
QUICK FACTS:
- Supreme Court Justice Stephen Brayer will be resigning from the nation’s high court in the near future.
- A person familiar with the justice’s movements confirmed to Bloomberg that the justice would be leaving, allowing President Joe Biden a chance to nominate his replacement.
- Breyer’s departure hopes to ensure that the Supreme Court doesn’t become even more conservative in what is largely believed to be a 6-3 conservative majority at the moment.
- Biden previously promised to nominate a Black woman, according to Newsweek.
WHITE HOUSE REPORTERS UPDATES:
- “Let him make whatever statement he’s going to make and I’m happy to talk about this later,” Biden tells reporters at White House when asked about Justice Breyer’s retirement according to Jennifer Jacobs, Sr. White House reporter for Bloomberg News.
- CNN Chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins expanded on the president’s comments, saying in addition to the other comments Biden “jokes to a CEO in the meeting with him right now, ‘Do you want to go to the Supreme Court?’”
- LA Times Legal Affairs Columnist and Former US Attorney and DOJ official Harry Litman released what he believes are the names of the frontrunners to replace brayer in a tweet just moments following the resignation announcement.
- “The two leading candidates to replace Breyer, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and CA SC Justice Leondra Kruger, both have a platinum-plated resume every bit as prestigious and rarefied as those of the last several appointees. Including the most prestigious clerkships in the country,” Litman said.
BACKGROUND:
- The New York Times reported in their live updates that “Democrats may have to act quickly to prevent the Supreme Court from becoming more conservative.
- They went on to point out the danger, saying that if the Senate loses even one seat to Republicans in midterms the already majority Republican body would be able to take control of the confirmation proceedings.
- Following the death of the late Justice Ruth Badder Ginsberg, Breyer became the court’s oldest justice at 83-years-old.
- Breyer is the court’s oldest justice at 83.
