Ideology expressed by ex-justice on Supreme Court blasted as ‘bunk’

By Bob Unruh

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer at the State of the Union address on Tuesday, March 1, 2022. (Video screenshot)
Ex-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer at the State of the Union address on Tuesday, March 1, 2022.

Stephen Breyer, who sat on the U.S. Supreme Court for nearly three decades before resigning in 2022, has written a book, like so many others who come out of the Washington, D.C., swamp, and is on a tour promoting it.

As part of those interviews, he’s lashed out at the rest of the court for overturning the faulty and unconstitutional Roe v. Wade decision that created a “right” to abortion, and also promoted his personal ideology of a changeable U.S. Constitution.

And he’s getting blasted, in a house editorial at the Washington Examiner, for his warping of the nation’s foundation document.

“The learned justice says his method of judging is needed as a model for successors because ‘the world does change,’ so if the court doesn’t interpret the Constitution as evolvable, too, ‘we will have a Constitution that no one wants.’ Therefore, he says repeatedly, his method ‘involves purposes, consequences, values, and sometimes much more.’

“This sounds high-minded and reasonable, but it is bunk. Even worse, it is a power grab subject to no limiting principle, especially when he goes into an open-ended ‘much more’ phase. Breyer treats as paramount the jurist’s subjective assessment of ‘values and sometimes much more,’ as if he possesses Olympian wisdom about such matter above that of mere mortals. This would turn representative democracy into an elitist oligarchy, a rule by nine supposedly wise men and women, against America’s constitutional design that deliberately separates, disperses, and blends power in multitudinous ways intended to safeguard liberty.”

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Breyer quit the court at a time when Joe Biden was able to push Ketanji Jackson, a far-left ideologue adored by leftists, onto the bench.

The Examiner noted that Breyer’s comments suggest he basically puts judges “above the law.”

Breyer’s writings claim to make a case for using “pragmatism,” or adjusting the Constitution to circumstances, rather than reading it as it was originally written.

“What Breyer’s suggestion amounts to is the anti-democratic idea that judges should be free to twist what the law says to suit their own prejudices — that is, they should be above the law rather than servants of it.”

The piece explained what America’s founders set up: “In a republic, applying ‘values’ and trying to create the right ‘consequences’ is the job not of judges but of the people’s elected representatives, or of the people themselves. The Constitution, as fundamental law enacted by the people, is supreme. Statutes written via representative procedures are next. The reason judges, ultimately Supreme Court justices, are final arbiters of what the law means is not because they possess superior moral or value-based perspicacity, but because they are supposed to be the most learned in parsing the words of laws to ensure they are applied faithfully. Jurists are supposed to be guided and humbly governed by the words of the law, not by willful masters over them.”

It continued, “Breyer’s ‘pragmatism’ … invites the mischief of judicial willfulness, unmoored from objective restraints, applied by nine people acting as philosopher kings.”

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Bob Unruh

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially. Read more of Bob Unruh's articles here.


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