--- title: President Obama Hints At Upcoming Supreme Court Vacancy description: The President suggests for the first time a Supreme Court vacancy in his final two years of office canonical: https://time.com/3102043/obama-supreme-court-senate-ginsburg-breyer/ author: Zeke Miller article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-08-12T00:32:29.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:00:54.133Z article:section: Politics og:title: At fundraiser, Obama suggests upcoming Supreme Court vacancy og:description: The President suggests for the first time a Supreme Court vacancy in his final two years of office og:url: https://time.com/3102043/obama-supreme-court-senate-ginsburg-breyer/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: At fundraiser, Obama suggests upcoming Supreme Court vacancy twitter:description: The President suggests for the first time a Supreme Court vacancy in his final two years of office twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # President Obama Suggests Upcoming Supreme Court Vacancy > Sponsored content. 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Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens on guns, the death penalty and doubting Shakespeare_ by [Zeke Miller](https://time.com/author/zeke-j-miller/) ## Zeke Miller Aug 12, 2014 12:32 AM UTC by [Zeke Miller](https://time.com/author/zeke-j-miller/) ## Zeke Miller Aug 12, 2014 12:32 AM UTC President Barack Obama hinted at the possibility of an upcoming vacancy on the Supreme Court Monday during a fundraiser for Senate Democrats. Speaking to a group of donors to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on a break from his vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, Obama said he needs Democrats to hold a majority this year to fill vacancies to the high court. “What’s preventing us from getting things done right now is you’ve got a faction within the Republican Party that thinks solely in terms of their own ideological purposes and solely in terms of how do they hang on to power,” Obama said. “And that’s a problem. And that’s why I need a Democratic Senate. Not to mention the fact that we’re going to have Supreme Court appointments, and there are going to be a whole host of issues that many people here care about that are going to be determined by whether or not Democrats retain the Senate.” It was not the first time Obama has tied the Supreme Court to the midterm elections, but it was the first time Obama has explicitly suggested there would be a vacancy in his final years. Two of the Court’s left-leaning justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, 81 and 75 respectively, have been facing calls from Democrats to step aside before Obama leaves office in 2017 to ensure that their seats remain occupied by liberals in the event Republicans regain the White House. Ginsburg brushed aside calls for her retirement last month in an interview with [Yahoo News’](http://news.yahoo.com/katie-couric-interviews-ruth-bader-ginsburg-185027624.html) Katie Couric. “All I can say is that I am still here and likely to remain for a while,” she said. Ginsburg has twice been treated for cancer while on the bench. Obama successfully nominated Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court in his first two years in office. If Democrats lose the Senate this November, Obama would find it nearly impossible to get a Supreme Court nominee with a liberal bent confirmed. A White House spokesperson said Obama did not have a specific vacancy in mind Monday. “The President’s comments were meant to convey the important role the Senate would play in the event of a Supreme Court vacancy,” the spokesperson said. “They were not in reference to a specific vacancy.” ## Transcript Hi, I'm Belinda Luscombe from Time Magazine. I'm an editor at large. Our guest today at Ten Questions is the third longest serving Supreme Court Justice ever. He's personally know five chief justices of the Supreme Court. And he writes about them all in his new book, Five Chiefs. Justice John Paul Stevens, thanks for doing this. Thank you. Now I think we should start right in with the most difficult and most controversial issues, why bow ties? Well, because I had too difficulty tying the foreign hand, when I tie a foreign this small part gets around in front. In Five Chiefs in a more serious note, you write about how in 1976 you voted to reinstate the death penalty, and then you over. Period of years changed her mind about it. Would you like to explain why? The, in 1976 those of us who were the critical voters in favor of upholding the death penalty, understood that the penalty would be, would be applied in a very narrow set of cases. Where the the really outrageous crimes and only those cases. And we also assumed there would be careful procedures in place that would have minimized the risks of making mistakes. And over the years, the court expanded the category of cases in which the death penalty is permissible. Do you think it should be overturned? Do you see that happening? Well, I am, I'm not a good predictor of what might happen, but in due course, I think it will. Just when is anybody's guess. You also write about the Citizens United decision that allowed corporations, as I understand it, to spend as much as they wanted in on campaign advertising. How do you feel about that decision? [ LAUGH ] If you've got time to read 90 pages of a dissent, you'll find out I feel rather strongly that the court made a serious mistake in interpreting the law there. And finding that money is equivalent of speech protected by the First Amendment. And suggesting that the First Amendment gives constitutional protection to campaign expenditures, I think is quite wrong. And if followed out to its logical conclusion, probably would have provided First Amendment protection to the Watergate burglars, because they were financed with campaign expenditures. We have, in America at the moment, one in nine black men in prison, between the ages of 20 to 34. Is something wrong with the Judicial system with that number? Or is it a different problem? It's a, it's a problem that's produced by a, a large number of cau -, of causes. The use of the mandatory minimum statutes has had a very adverse effect on the overall system. And, and I think generally, the so- called war on drugs. Has emphasized more severe punishment than is appropriate in it, throughout the country. And there are some instances where they're so disproportionate that they could well violate the eighth amendment. So, if I gave you a magic wand and said you could fix one thing about the American judicial system, what would it be? I would make all my dissents into majority opinions. [ LAUGH ] That's what I would do with a magic wand. [ LAUGH ] Is there one in particular? That you mentioned Citizens United, I would change that. I would change the, the, the interpretation of the Second Amendment. The court got that quite wrong. So what would you like to see done with gun legislation? I would think that the gun policies should be handled by the representatives of the people, not judges appointed for life. How did the arrival of women in the Supreme Court change things? I can't really identify any change in jurisprudence as, as attributable just to that fact. In fact, the major change in terms of gender discrimination came about by decision written by Warren Burger holding that discrimination against. Women in appointing an executor of an estate, violated the constitution, and that was an all male court. In the book, you note that one of the things your admire about Burger and Roberts, I guess, is that they are, they were great chiefs because they were so good looking and handsome and sporty. How important is that in a Chief Justice? Well, it's not terribly important. It's, it's a strong plus. [ LAUGH ]. I mean, it, that's the person who most often is, is known to represent the Court in public affairs like swearing in the President and, and greeting foreign visitors and things like that. It is significant but not nearly as important as the kind of judicial work they do. What's the best way to get a Supreme Court Justice on your side? Is personal friendships within the court important? No. The best way is to do your, be as persuasive as you can explaining the arguments that favor one side rather than the other. It's not a matter of personal charm or anything of that kind. I could be wrong here, that you don't think that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. Well, I think that there's very good arguments, raising questions about whether a man who never had seemed to have any correspondence with, with his contemporaries about the plays. And when he passed, there were no eulogies to Shakespeare at the time. There are a number of reasons for, questioning whether. People got it right when they assumed that the fact that his name appears on the plays is adequate proof that he really wrote that. Justice Stevens, thank you so much for your time. Well thank you, I've enjoyed it. 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