Former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said the highest court's conservative majority justices would give Americans a Constitution that "no one wants."
Breyer made his comments while speaking with POLITICO in promotion of his new book Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism.
"If the court continues to deploy their methods of interpretation," Breyer told to outlet's senior writer Ankush Khardori, "we will have a Constitution that no one wants."
In the book, which was released Tuesday, Breyer warned of "originalism," claiming that particular interpretation of the Constitution was "inherently regressive" and "will not permit modern solutions to modern problems."
Breyer also warned originalism could "consign us to a set of views and values that predominated during a period when many groups of people today were not equal citizens."
"When the founders were thinking about and writing the words of the Constitution and protecting certain basic rights in the Constitution, women were not really part of the political process," Breyer said. "They didn’t have a right to vote, and there was slavery, and the slaves weren’t part of [the political process either]."
"In the 1860s, after the Civil War, they wrote words designed to protect some people, but the theory of who is part of this community — America, which precedes through democratic means — was quite different then than it is now," he added.
Breyer went on to claim originalist interpretations of the Constitution "overlook lots of changes designed to further the value of protecting basic civil rights, because the world has changed."
The former Supreme Court justice went on to lament the Supreme Court's 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
"The majority thought in Dobbs there would be fewer cases," he said. "We will turn the abortion matter over to the states, and they will legislate or Congress will legislate and it won’t be decided by the courts."
Breyer continued:But Tuesday, there will be cases on abortion in the Supreme Court. Many states have many different abortion laws now, and I suspect that many of them will be decided in the court where the words will matter, where it will be more complicated than ever, and if you think it’s going to be simpler, I have a bridge in New York City I’d like to sell you.
During a Friday interview on NBC News' Meet the Press with host Kristen Welker, Breyer said he had hoped his former colleagues would have found a "compromise" while ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
Breyer also noted the leaked Dobbs opinion indicating the court would overturn Roe v. Wade was "unfortunate."
