at the white house. he plans to stay on until the end of the term in june and until a replacement is confirmed. he is 83 years old and the oldest and most senior liberal justice. he was nominated in 1994 by president clinton. with us now is jessica schneider. tell us what more we know about his decision. we know he understands the political realities of this moment for democrats. he is someone who previously worked for the senate judiciary committee before becoming a judge and has said in the past he would consider two things when deciding to leave. his health and the court. so with no known health issues, it s clear the court s is his main focus. he s been facing unrelenting political pressure over the past year from progressives. they have been demanding he step down to leave plenty of time for president biden to name a successor, but at the same time, he has been really outspoken about the perils of viewing the supreme court politically. he published a book in septembe
even though she didn t want to get into the details until breyer announcing this decision that it s a hypothetical, she did appear to confirm the big looming question, whether or not president biden intends to stand by his campaign pledge to nominate the first black woman to serve as a justice on the supreme court when that vacancy becomes official. just to give you a sense of how much the president s day has been up ended by this news, he was meeting with a number of ceoearlier today. we were in the room. all of the reporters in the room trying to get a quick reaction from the president to this news. take a listen. as the opportunity to decide what he or she will do and announce it on their own. there s been no announcement from justice breyer. let him make whatever statement he will be make. i ll be happy to talk about it later. thank you so much. you really can t underscore enough what a momentous decision this is for a sitting u.s. president to make. now president bid
Jeffrey, you re up first. we know that this will not shift the balance of the court but your take on the significance, the impact on the court of this announcement this retirement. well, one thing we know is that joseph biden will not join jimmy carter as the only president to have served a full term without naming anymore to the supreme court. there were just no vacancies. we know something that byron white said. he served on the court for a very long time said any time you change one justice, you don t just change one justice, you change the whole court. the very likely nomination of a black woman would be historic in and of itself. it would make four women on the supreme court for the first time in history and would give a shot in the arm to the liberals who would be sure that at least some of them will be around for quite some time.
District court. i could go through every one of those women who have been named as potential nominees and sing their praises based on their intellects, reputation and impartiality alone. but again, we re talking about a system that s inherently political. here s why that s important. for the same reasons that many of the people who have been talked about have been recently confirmed, i am waiting to see to what extent somebody will bring up for example, judge brown. whether they will mention her relative infancy when it comes to being an appellate judge in d.c. circuit and comparing that to how the relative infancy was when it came to justice amy coney barrett. there was bipartisan support for several of these women in recent types. i m wondering if there will be hypocrisy going forward about when suddenly it comes to the highest court in the land, their ability and credibility will be challenged. it will be very interesting to see how they do this, but as dana mentioned, it s so impor
The fact is age matters on the supreme court. by supreme court standards the new nominee will be fairly young. it will be clear that there will be a liberal presence on the supreme court for some time. although they are now very much in the minority. it s been so interesting to see these old interviews with justice breyer and to hear about the role that he played behind the scenes and that he was seen as someone who was willing to compromise and willing to cross the aisle and skjust by definitn his replacement will be a newbinewbie and unable the play that same role. he was under a lot of pressure from conservative groups last term to retire. i m sorry, from liberal groups. he chose not to. they were furious. some people thipnk he decided t