The best replacement for Stephen Breyer is Stephen Breyer

The retiring justice's humble judicial philosophy can preserve the court's legitimacy and woo its center-right bloc

Stephen Breyer.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

So Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring after all.

The gnashing of teeth and rending of garments on both the left and center-left about his irresponsibility probably only served to firm up his conviction that he had to stick around until the noise died down so as not to politicize what is, ultimately, an entirely sensible decision independent of any hope he might harbor of being replaced by someone ideologically similar to him.

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Noah Millman

Noah Millman is a screenwriter and filmmaker, a political columnist and a critic. From 2012 through 2017 he was a senior editor and featured blogger at The American Conservative. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Politico, USA Today, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Foreign Policy, Modern Age, First Things, and the Jewish Review of Books, among other publications. Noah lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.