Courts

Do Supreme Court Justices Get More Liberal As They Age?

Justice Stephen Breyer has some thoughts on the matter.

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Justice Stephen Breyer (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

I think you tend to look from 30,000 feet, say, more often than you did. On the other hand, this great wisdom you’re supposed to acquire over time does quite often express itself in something that sounds as if it came out of a fortune cookie. So there are pluses and minuses.

Whether it’s always to the left, I don’t know. It’s very hard to say.

— Justice Stephen Breyer, expounding upon whether judges and justices get more liberal as they get older, during an interview with Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick. “[T]he court changes very, very, very slowly over long periods of time,” Breyer later added. “That’s what I think, because it’s the legal view and this sort of jurisprudential view: What is the country like? What’s this Constitution about? What is the court about? What is its proper role? Those questions will never be answered.”

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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