“Elections have consequences, and that is most evident when it comes to fulfilling vacancies on the Supreme Court,” Graham claims.
Breyer was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994. He is considered one of the court’s moderate-to-liberal members. Breyer has often said it was misleading to label justices as liberal or conservative.
Breyer believes that interpreting the Constitution should be based on practical considerations. And they change with the times. More conservative justices say the court must be guided by the original intent of the founders.
“The reason that I do that is because law in general, I think, grows out of communities of people who have some problems they want to solve,” Breyer said in an interview.
Breyer also wrote the court’s opinion striking down a state law that banned some late-term abortions in 2000. And he dissented in 2007, when the Supreme Court upheld a similar federal law passed by Congress.
He supported civil rights measures, including affirmative action. And in a dissent in 2015, he said the death penalty in America had become so arbitrary that it was probably unconstitutional.