Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has informed President Joe Biden that he will officially retire from the bench on Thursday, ending a nearly 30 year career on the nation’s highest court.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Breyer’s former clerk, will be sworn in the same day, the high court announced later Wednesday.
“It has been my great honor to participate as a judge in the effort to maintain our Constitution and the Rule of Law,” Breyer wrote in a letter to President Biden.
Breyer’s retirement will officially go into effect at noon on Thursday, hours after the court is set to issue its remaining opinons for the term.
Breyer announced in January he would retire from the high court at the end of its current term.
Jackson, who was confirmed by the Senate in April, will be the first Black woman and the first former federal public defender to serve on the nation’s highest court.
During Thursday’s swearing-in ceremony, Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the Constitutional Oath, while Breyer will administer the Judicial Oath. A small gathering of Jackson’s family will be in attendance, according to the high court.
Breyer, 83, is the high court’s oldest justice, and has been a key member of its liberal wing for years. Breyer was first nominated to the Supreme Court in 1994 by then-President Bill Clinton; Biden, then a U.S. Senator, presided over his confirmation hearings as the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“I enormously appreciate the privilege of serving as part of the federal judicial system,” he wrote in a letter to President Biden at the time. “I have found the work challenging and meaningful. My relations with each of my colleagues have been warm and friendly.”
Breyer faced calls to retire by a number of progressive members of the Democratic party, especially in the wake of Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump nominating three conservative justices to the bench – including tapping Justice Amy Coney Barrett to replace liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just weeks before the 2020 election.
He leaves a court much more conservative than the one he joined, after a tumultuous term full of several high-profile cases, including recent decisions overturning Roe v. Wade, expanding Second Amendment protections and those in favor of religious plaintiffs.
This is a developing story. Check back later for further updates.
