We didn’t often agree with Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, but tip a cap to his honorable 58-year career that included stints in all three branches of government. Justice Breyer, age 83, resigned at noon on Thursday to make way for his successor, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Justice Breyer’s 28 years on the High Court were informed by his time working in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and at the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he helped deregulate airlines in the late 1970s. As a judge he was a pragmatist fond of balancing tests, not an ideologue. He broke ranks to rule for religious liberty in Trinity Lutheran (2017). His law-and-economics view of antitrust might soon be sorely missed.
