President Biden announced Thursday that he will nominate the first black woman to the Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, saying such a move was “long overdue.”
In remarks from the Roosevelt Room at the White House, the president said he intended to settle on a choice before the end of February following a “rigorous” process and vowed his nominee would be “worthy of Justice Breyer’s legacy of excellence and decency.”
“While I’ve been studying candidates’ backgrounds and writings, I’ve made no decision except one: the person I will nominate will be someone of extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity, and that person will be the first black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court,” Biden said. “It’s long overdue in my view. I made that commitment during the campaign for president and I will keep that commitment.”
The president also indicated that Vice President Kamala Harris would play a key role in the selection process, calling her “an exceptional lawyer” and noting her past service as California’s attorney general, as well as on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Breyer confirmed his retirement in a Thursday letter to Biden, writing that his departure would “take effect when the Court rises for the summer recess this year (typically late June or early July) assuming that by then my successor has been nominated and confirmed.”
Word of Breyer’s retirement leaked around midday Wednesday, but Biden and the White House refused to comment without a formal statement from the justice himself.
“Everyone knows Stephen Breyer has been an exemplary justice, fair to the party before him, courteous to his colleagues, careful in his reasoning,” Biden said. “He’s written landmark opinions on topics ranging from reproductive rights to health care, to voting rights, to patent law, the laws protecting our environment, and the laws that protect our religious practices. His opinions are practical, sensible and nuanced. They reflect his belief that the job of a judge is not to lay down a rule, but to get it right.”
“This is a complicated country,” Breyer said in remarks following Biden. “There are more than 330 million people. And my mother used to say, it’s every race, it’s every religion — and she would emphasize this — and it’s every point of view possible.”
“It’s a kind of miracle when you sit there and see all those people in front of you,” Breyer went on. “People that are so different in what they think. And yet, they’ve decided to help solve their major differences under law. And when [high school] students get too cynical, I say go look at what happens in countries that don’t do that … People have come to accept this Constitution, and they’ve come to accept the importance of the rule of law.”
Biden declined to take reporter questions after Breyer finished speaking.
“I think it’s inappropriate to take questions with the justice here,” the president said. “He’s still sitting on the bench. But you’ll have plenty of opportunities to get me later today and for the rest of the week.”
This is an excerpt from the New York Post.
Scroll down to leave a comment and share your thoughts.