Politics & Power Quote by Stephen Breyer

Breyer’s line flatters the American fantasy that law floats above politics, even as it quietly concedes how fragile that separation is. “Nobody wants” is doing strategic work: it casts judicial independence not as a partisan preference but as a baseline civic instinct, the kind of common sense that supposedly precedes ideology. That rhetorical move matters because it reframes an argument about power as an argument about stability. You don’t have to love the courts to fear what happens when they become weather vanes.

The phrase “political whim of the moment” is a pointed downgrade of democratic urgency. “Whim” suggests something fickle, impulsive, unserious; “moment” implies a short attention span. Breyer isn’t just defending life tenure or insulated decision-making. He’s warning against a culture of instantaneous accountability where institutions are expected to sync with the news cycle. In an era of polarized confirmations, court-packing chatter, and litigating politics through the judiciary, the line reads like an appeal to slow time down.

The subtext is also self-preserving. Courts depend on legitimacy more than force; their power comes from public acceptance that rulings are grounded in principle, not retaliation. Breyer’s intent is to protect that legitimacy by insisting that judges must be difficult to move - precisely so they can sometimes move the country. It’s an argument for countermajoritarian friction: the judiciary as a brake, not a mirror, when the “moment” is loud, angry, or opportunistic.