It was a full-circle moment for both men when President Joe Biden announced on Thursday that Justice Stephen Breyer would retire from the Supreme Court at the end of his term later this year.
Biden was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time of Breyer's confirmation in 1994.
The president ruminated on the unique moment in the Roosevelt Room at the White House before the judge delivered his remarks, nearly 28 years after he was confirmed to the court.
When he walked in, we were joking that he would have served decades on the Court and I would be President on the day he retired, Biden said. I'm joking.
The president joked about the unusual circumstance, but his high regard for the justice remained steadfast over the years, according to The New York Times.
In the past few months, liberal groups have been calling for Justice Breyer to step down from the bench to allow Biden to appoint a younger justice.
With conservatives holding a 6-3 edge on the court and a Democratic-controlled Senate that could potentially flip to the Republican Party after the 2022, activists were worried that a GOP majority would block a potential Biden nominee and hold open any vacancies through the 2024 presidential election.
The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg just weeks before the 2020 election allowed then-president Donald Trump to install Amy ConeyBarrett to the court, quickly shifting the late justice's seat from one led by a liberal icon to that of a jurist championed by the conservative movement.
The prospect of a 7-2 conservative court sent progressives into a frenzy, with activists determined to prioritize the judiciary in the way that Republicans had done over the last few decades.
Biden, who represented Delaware in the Senate for 36 years, wanted Breyer to step down so that he could make an appointment, but he wasn't willing to force the justice's hand.
The president has a reverence for the role of a Supreme Court justice and felt that the pleas for the jurist to step down might fail in light of liberal groups already asking for him to step down, according to the Times.
In August of last year, he told The New York Times that he was pondering when he would retire.
"I don't like making decisions about myself," said Breyer at the time.
The justice spoke of the more surprising rulings that have come from the court in his book, The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics.
He wrote in the book that his experience as a judge has shown him that anyone taking the judicial oath takes it very seriously.
Many on the left have pointed to a White House lunch in which Barack Obama spoke of the possibility of Democrats losing their majority in the upcoming elections and the possibility of a potential replacement.
The Times reported that Biden did not directly ask Ginsburg to retire, but the implications of major changes in the makeup of the Senate were apparent. Ginsburg died in September 2020 at the age of 87.
According to The Times, Biden did not entertain Breyer in that way.
It was the first time that the two men had spoken since Biden took office in January 2021.
Demand Justice, a liberal advocacy that had been aggressive in its campaign calling for Breyer to step down so Biden could nominate a successor, was happy with the justice's announcement.
The executive director of the group told The Times that they werelieved that he made the decision that he did, while also noting that the gentlemanly posture regarding judicial retirements was too mired in the past.
He told the newspaper that the idea of remaining silent in a situation like this is characteristic of a hands-off approach that Democrats have taken with the court.
Biden recommits to his campaign pledge of nominating the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, a historic appointment that will likely not shift the ideological balance of the court but will allow the president to replace Breyer with a jurist that could serve for decades.
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