Politics & Power Quote by Stephen Breyer

Breyer’s line sounds almost civics-class plain, which is exactly why it lands: it quietly drags responsibility back where Americans often prefer not to keep it. Coming from a Supreme Court justice famous for pragmatic, institution-minded liberalism, it’s not a romantic call to “participation” so much as a warning about drift. Courts can interpret; they can’t supply the democratic will that makes interpretation legitimate.

The specific intent is to reframe government as a design choice, not a weather system. “Figure out” is doing the heavy lifting: it implies deliberation, tradeoffs, and a tolerance for complexity. Breyer isn’t asking citizens what policy they like today; he’s asking what governing style they’re willing to live with over time - strong executives or constrained ones, broad rights or narrower ones, technocratic expertise or populist volatility. In a polarized era, that’s a corrective to politics as fandom, where the goal is winning rather than building.

The subtext is also a defense of democratic legitimacy amid rising suspicion of institutions. When people treat government as something that happens to them, courts become convenient scapegoats or saviors. Breyer’s career has been a long argument against that binary - against the fantasy that nine justices can “fix” politics, and against the cynicism that says nothing can be fixed. He’s pointing to the feedback loop: citizen expectations shape elections; elections shape appointments; appointments shape the law’s boundaries.

Context matters: coming from a judge, the statement is almost an ethical boundary. It’s a reminder that if you want a different kind of government, the remedy is collective choice, not judicial alchemy.