Justice Breyer's retirement gives Biden his first opportunity for a high court pick

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Justice Breyer's retirement¹ gives Biden his first opportunity for a high court pick

Transcript²

He's written many of the court's less glamorous³ but legally important decisions. Contenders to replace him are California Supreme⁴ Court Justice Leondra Kruger and federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is expected to announce his retirement today. At 83, he has written many of the court's less glamorous but legally important decisions. Here's NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg.

NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE⁵: If Stephen Breyer hadn't been a justice, Hollywood might have made him up. Deeply intellectual, fluent in not just law but philosophy, art and culture, he was also absent-minded, geeky, self-deprecatingly funny, physically⁶ fit, but so preoccupied⁷ that he, three times, suffered serious injuries when knocked off his bicycle. Among Breyer's most publicly well-known decisions was the one he wrote in 2016, striking down a Texas law that closed nearly half the clinics in the state without any demonstrable safety justification⁸. The decision had no majestic⁹ language, but its effect was profound in reaffirming, at the time, the rights of women to terminate pregnancies¹⁰.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

STEPHEN BREYER: The closures mean fewer doctors, longer waiting times, increased crowding and significantly greater travel distances, all of which, when taken together, burden a woman's right to choose.

TOTENBERG: For the most part, though, Breyer's monuments were not so much the decisions that he authored, as the decisions that he influenced. Behind the scenes, he pushed and prodded¹¹ his fellow justices for consensus¹² on everything from Obamacare to affirmative action. In 2013, when the court's conservatives seemed poised¹³ to invalidate all affirmative action programs in higher education, the justices instead punted on the issue by a 7-to-1 vote. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the decision, but Breyer's hidden hand was said to be behind the compromised ruling. And three years later, Kennedy would, for the first time, embrace affirmative action in higher education.

Sunny in disposition¹⁴, naturally optimistic, Breyer believed in persuasion¹⁵ and viewed a dissent¹⁶ as a failed opinion. But he did dissent, and sometimes passionately¹⁷, as he did in 2007, when a five-justice majority struck down voluntary school desegregation plans in Louisville, Ky., where the schools had once been segregated¹⁸ by law, and in Seattle, where they'd been segregated in practice. As Breyer noted¹⁹, the court had long allowed local school districts considerable leeway to prevent resegregation. But now it was striking down the same sorts of plans because of the votes of five justices, two of them new to the court.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BREYER: It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much.

TOTENBERG: It was hardly the only time that Breyer would see the court's handiwork, even his own work, quickly undone²⁰ by a dramatically more conservative new court majority. Breyer, for instance, was one of the justices who wrote the court's majority opinion upholding a 2002 federal law aimed at limiting the influence of big money in campaigns, only to see the law gutted²¹ by a different and more conservative majority seven years later. Briefly²² despondent²³, he ultimately returned to his optimistic ways, always hoping to persuade and sometimes succeeding. But this year, faced with a 6-to-3 conservative supermajority apparently²⁴ determined²⁵ to reverse some longtime legal precedents²⁷ that he cared deeply about, including abortion²⁸, Breyer decided²⁹ it was time to go.

Stephen Gerald Breyer was born in San Francisco, where his father was a lawyer for the city's public schools. An academic star at Stanford, Harvard Law School and Oxford³⁰, Breyer would go on to spend decades as a professor at Harvard Law School but with several stints³¹ in Washington, in the Justice Department, then as an assistant prosecutor³² in the investigation³³ of the Watergate scandal and as chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, then chaired by Senator Edward Kennedy. It was Kennedy's example that taught Breyer important lessons on how to forge consensus.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BREYER: He'd tell us, don't worry so much about credit. Credit is something where if you succeed, there will be plenty of credit to go around. And if you fail, who wants the credit?

TOTENBERG: While on the committee, Breyer helped enact³⁴ legislation that deregulated the airline industry and legislation to make federal criminal sentencing more uniform. He was so successful that when President Carter nominated him to the federal appeals court based in Boston just days after Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, Republicans let the appointment go through, an act of cooperation that is simply unimaginable today. Breyer served as an appeals court judge for 14 years, eventually becoming chief judge. And in 1994, President Clinton named him to the Supreme Court.

Once there, he proved a moderate liberal who worked well with moderate conservatives like Sandra Day O'Connor. When she retired³⁵ and conservatives of a new brand began to populate the court, Breyer sought to make the public case against the conservative doctrine³⁶ of originalism, often debating conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, now deceased. While Scalia argued that the Constitution must be interpreted as the Founding Fathers would have at the time it was written, Breyer countered that the founders³⁷ understood perfectly³⁸ well that nothing is static, citing, for example, the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BREYER: Flogging as a punishment might have been fine in the 18th century. That doesn't mean that it would be OK and not cruel and unusual today.

TOTENBERG: What's more, he observed in an NPR interview, even historians don't agree on what the founders meant at the time they wrote the Constitution.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

BREYER: History is very often, in these matters, a blank slate³⁹ or a confused slate. And if you want to govern the country by means of that history, then you better select nine historians, and not nine judges, to be on the court. And I'll tell you, those nine historians will very often disagree with each other.

TOTENBERG: The job of a Supreme Court Justice, Breyer said, is to apply the Constitution's values to modern circumstances, using the tools of judging, precedent²⁶, text, and the purpose of the constitutional provision at issue. You can think of the Constitution as laying down certain frontiers or borders, he said.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

BREYER: And we're the Border Patrol. Life on the border is sometimes tough, and whether a particular matter - abortion or gerrymandering or school prayer - whether that's inside the boundary and permitted or outside the boundary and forbidden is often a very, very difficult and close question.

TOTENBERG: Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.

(SOUNDBITE OF JOHNATHAN'S BLAKE'S "RIVERS AND PARKS")

1 retirement   

n.退休，退职

参考例句：

• She wanted to enjoy her retirement without being beset by financial worries.她想享受退休生活而不必为金钱担忧。
• I have to put everything away for my retirement.我必须把一切都积蓄起来以便退休后用。

2 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

3 glamorous   

adj.富有魅力的；美丽动人的；令人向往的

参考例句：

• The south coast is less glamorous but full of clean and attractive hotels.南海岸魅力稍逊，但却有很多干净漂亮的宾馆。
• It is hard work and not a glamorous job as portrayed by the media.这是份苦差，并非像媒体描绘的那般令人向往。

4 supreme   

adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的

参考例句：

• It was the supreme moment in his life.那是他一生中最重要的时刻。
• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。

5 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

6 physically   

adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律

参考例句：

• He was out of sorts physically,as well as disordered mentally.他浑身不舒服，心绪也很乱。
• Every time I think about it I feel physically sick.一想起那件事我就感到极恶心。

7 preoccupied   

adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式)

参考例句：

• He was too preoccupied with his own thoughts to notice anything wrong. 他只顾想着心事，没注意到有什么不对。
• The question of going to the Mount Tai preoccupied his mind. 去游泰山的问题盘踞在他心头。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 justification   

n.正当的理由；辩解的理由

参考例句：

• There's no justification for dividing the company into smaller units. 没有理由把公司划分成小单位。
• In the young there is a justification for this feeling. 在年轻人中有这种感觉是有理由的。

9 majestic   

adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的

参考例句：

• In the distance rose the majestic Alps.远处耸立着雄伟的阿尔卑斯山。
• He looks majestic in uniform.他穿上军装显得很威风。

10 pregnancies   

怀孕，妊娠( pregnancy的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Since the wartime population needed replenishment, pregnancies were a good sign. 最后一桩倒不失为好现象，战时人口正该补充。
• She's had three pregnancies in four years. 她在四年中怀孕叁次。

11 prodded   

v.刺，戳( prod的过去式和过去分词 )；刺激；促使；（用手指或尖物）戳

参考例句：

• She prodded him in the ribs to wake him up. 她用手指杵他的肋部把他叫醒。
• He prodded at the plate of fish with his fork. 他拿叉子戳弄着那盘鱼。 来自《简明英汉词典》

12 consensus   

n.(意见等的)一致，一致同意，共识

参考例句：

• Can we reach a consensus on this issue?我们能在这个问题上取得一致意见吗？
• What is the consensus of opinion at the afternoon meeting?下午会议上一致的意见是什么？

13 poised   

a.摆好姿势不动的

参考例句：

• The hawk poised in mid-air ready to swoop. 老鹰在半空中盘旋，准备俯冲。
• Tina was tense, her hand poised over the telephone. 蒂娜心情紧张，手悬在电话机上。

14 disposition   

n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署

参考例句：

• He has made a good disposition of his property.他已对财产作了妥善处理。
• He has a cheerful disposition.他性情开朗。

15 persuasion   

n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派

参考例句：

• He decided to leave only after much persuasion.经过多方劝说，他才决定离开。
• After a lot of persuasion,she agreed to go.经过多次劝说后，她同意去了。

16 dissent   

n./v.不同意，持异议

参考例句：

• It is too late now to make any dissent.现在提出异议太晚了。
• He felt her shoulders gave a wriggle of dissent.他感到她的肩膀因为不同意而动了一下。

17 passionately   

ad.热烈地，激烈地

参考例句：

• She could hate as passionately as she could love. 她能恨得咬牙切齿，也能爱得一往情深。
• He was passionately addicted to pop music. 他酷爱流行音乐。

18 segregated   

分开的； 被隔离的

参考例句：

• a culture in which women are segregated from men 妇女受到隔离歧视的文化
• The doctor segregated the child sick with scarlet fever. 大夫把患猩红热的孩子隔离起来。

19 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

20 undone   

a.未做完的，未完成的

参考例句：

• He left nothing undone that needed attention.所有需要注意的事他都注意到了。

21 gutted   

adj.容易消化的v.毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的过去式和过去分词 )；取出…的内脏

参考例句：

• Disappointed? I was gutted! 失望？我是伤心透了！
• The invaders gutted the historic building. 侵略者们将那幢历史上有名的建筑洗劫一空。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

22 briefly   

adv.简单地，简短地

参考例句：

• I want to touch briefly on another aspect of the problem.我想简单地谈一下这个问题的另一方面。
• He was kidnapped and briefly detained by a terrorist group.他被一个恐怖组织绑架并短暂拘禁。

23 despondent   

adj.失望的，沮丧的，泄气的

参考例句：

• He was up for a time and then，without warning,despondent again.他一度兴高采烈，但忽然又情绪低落下来。
• I feel despondent when my work is rejected.作品被拒后我感到很沮丧。

24 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

25 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

26 precedent   

n.先例，前例；惯例；adj.在前的，在先的

参考例句：

• Is there a precedent for what you want me to do?你要我做的事有前例可援吗？
• This is a wonderful achievement without precedent in Chinese history.这是中国历史上亘古未有的奇绩。

27 precedents   

引用单元； 范例( precedent的名词复数 )； 先前出现的事例； 前例； 先例

参考例句：

• There is no lack of precedents in this connection. 不乏先例。
• He copied after bad precedents. 他仿效恶例。

28 abortion   

n.流产，堕胎

参考例句：

• She had an abortion at the women's health clinic.她在妇女保健医院做了流产手术。
• A number of considerations have led her to have a wilful abortion.多种考虑使她执意堕胎。

29 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

30 Oxford   

n.牛津（英国城市）

参考例句：

• At present he has become a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford.他现在已是牛津大学的化学教授了。
• This is where the road to Oxford joins the road to London.这是去牛津的路与去伦敦的路的汇合处。

31 stints   

n.定额工作( stint的名词复数 )；定量；限额；慷慨地做某事

参考例句：

• He stints himself in [of] sleep. 他节制睡眠。 来自辞典例句
• She never stints herself of money to buy books for her children. 她从不吝惜掏钱让子女们买书。 来自互联网

32 prosecutor   

n.起诉人；检察官，公诉人

参考例句：

• The defender argued down the prosecutor at the court.辩护人在法庭上驳倒了起诉人。
• The prosecutor would tear your testimony to pieces.检查官会把你的证言驳得体无完肤。

33 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

34 enact   

vt.制定(法律)；上演，扮演

参考例句：

• The U.S. Congress has exclusive authority to enact federal legislation.美国国会是唯一有权颁布联邦法律的。
• For example,a country can enact laws and economic policies to attract foreign investment fairly quickly.例如一个国家可以很快颁布吸引外资的法令和经济政策。

35 retired   

adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的

参考例句：

• The old man retired to the country for rest.这位老人下乡休息去了。
• Many retired people take up gardening as a hobby.许多退休的人都以从事园艺为嗜好。

36 doctrine   

n.教义；主义；学说

参考例句：

• He was impelled to proclaim his doctrine.他不得不宣扬他的教义。
• The council met to consider changes to doctrine.宗教议会开会考虑更改教义。

37 founders   

n.创始人( founder的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He was one of the founders of the university's medical faculty. 他是该大学医学院的创建人之一。 来自辞典例句
• The founders of our religion made this a cornerstone of morality. 我们宗教的创始人把这看作是道德的基石。 来自辞典例句

38 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

39 slate   

n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订

参考例句：

• The nominating committee laid its slate before the board.提名委员会把候选人名单提交全体委员会讨论。
• What kind of job uses stained wood and slate? 什么工作会接触木头污浊和石板呢？