Panicked progressives weren’t shy about telling Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to stop judging and start golfing or gardening.
“Justice Breyer should retire right now” was the headline over a typical see-ya-later-judge opinion piece in the New York Times last year. Not to be outdone, the Washington Post had one, too. And the Breyer-must-go cry hardly was limited to the opinion pages. There were marches and protests that boarded on unacceptable harassment of a learned, pragmatic liberal on the Supreme Court.
Such demands were at best unseemly and at worst damaging to our democracy. Like every justice, Breyer had a lifetime appointment. By all accounts, he remained competent at 83, as do many judges at that age. And the Supreme Court is supposed to be above partisan politics and attempts to time retirements to which party occupies the White House and what their prospects are for re-election.
