Breyer Says Justices Aren’t ‘Junior League Politicians’
Justice Stephen G. Breyer is worried about the public perception that the U.S. Supreme Court is influenced by politics.
Americans “think we’re a group of junior league politicians,” he told the Wall Street Journal in an interview. “They think we decide things on the basis of politics. Or, if not politics, on the basis of what we think is good for people, rather than the Constitution. And I think that’s wrong.”
Even when they disagree, “all nine of us think we’re following the same Constitution that was there in 1790,” Breyer told the newspaper.
A new poll released on Thursday found that 78 percent of Americans think Supreme Court justices sometimes let their political views influence their decisions. The poll by the Associated Press and the National Constitution Center also found that 74 percent of the respondents were at least somewhat confident in the Supreme Court.
Breyer has been promoting a new book, Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge’s View. At a town hall-style meeting in Los Angeles on Wednesday, he said he thinks the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision damaged public confidence in the judiciary, the Los Angeles Times reports. He added that the Supreme Court is a strong institution and “it recovers.”
