Noah Feldman, Columnist

Breyer’s Supreme Court Pragmatism Will Be Missed

The retiring justice’s practical-minded temperament infused the dominant jurisprudence of a less ideological era. Its demise is having painful consequences.

January 26, 2022 at 8:13 PM UTC

Updated on

January 26, 2022 at 8:25 PM UTC

By Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Centrist.
Photographer: Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg

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The news on Wednesday of Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement from the Supreme Court at the end of this blockbuster term marks an historical transition point.

One of the great pragmatists in the court’s history, Breyer is the last of President Bill Clinton’s appointees to still be serving. Only Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, now remains from the centrist court that sat together for longer than any other configuration of justices in history.