Politics & Power Quote by Stephen Breyer

Breyer’s line sounds bland enough to pass as a civics worksheet, and that’s exactly the point. By choosing “often” and “through the political process,” he avoids the melodrama of “partisan hacks” while still puncturing the comforting fiction that judges hover above politics. The intent is quiet realism: a reminder that legitimacy in the courts depends not only on robes and precedent, but on how power actually gets distributed in a democracy.

The subtext is doing more work than the sentence admits. “Appointed” signals a system built on selection, not election; it implies gatekeeping, bargaining, and coalition maintenance. “Political process” is a deliberately roomy phrase, encompassing Senate confirmations, interest groups, ideological litmus tests, donor networks, media narratives, and the strategic timing of vacancies. Breyer isn’t indicting the system so much as acknowledging its wiring: courts don’t escape politics; they are one of its arenas.

Context matters because Breyer spent decades defending the Court’s institutional credibility while also insisting that law is lived experience, not abstraction. Coming from a Supreme Court justice, the line reads as both candor and caution. Candor, because it concedes what many Americans already suspect after confirmation spectacles and polarization. Caution, because it suggests the remedy isn’t to pretend politics can be scrubbed out, but to design norms and expectations that keep political origins from becoming political obedience. It’s the pragmatic Breyer move: name the reality without surrendering the ideal.