Retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is worried the originalist and textualist tendencies of the majority of justices will push people to reject the Constitution.

The current conservative justices on the high court take a “constitutional and statutory interpretation” of interpreting the Constitution, differing from that of Breyer. He is concerned that recent decisions, notably the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, are not how the public wants the Constitution interpreted in a court of law. 

“We will have a Constitution that no one wants,” Breyer told Politico. 

This week, Breyer released a book titled Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism, explaining his views on constitutional interpretation. In his interview with Politico, he said he doesn’t think the way Republican-appointed justices interpret the Constitution is serving the country well.

“Over time, if I’m right, and I think I am, about how originalism and how textualism will work, they [the Supreme Court] will move — as you said at the beginning — they will move the interpretation of statutes away from the direction of trying to help people,” Breyer said. “They will move the law away from the direction of trying to produce a society where 340 or 330 or 320 million people of every race, every religion, every point of view, can live together more peacefully and productively.”

“That will move us away from the Constitution’s basic values. And if we are moved away to that degree, people will instinctively have less reason to follow cases they don’t like, which is called the rule of law,” Breyer said.

The “pragmatic” view Breyer espouses carries on a long argument between liberal and conservative legal scholars. Unmooring the Constitution from what its writers intended it to mean would give judges too much power, critics say.

“The people in fact want judges who will interpret the Constitution and the text of statutes as they are written,” Carrie Severino, president of the Concord Fund, a conservative advocacy organization formerly known as the Judicial Crisis Network, told the Washington Examiner. “Not because that leaves judges as the solvers of all our problems, but precisely because the people and those they elect should have the power to set our country’s path.”

“Justice Breyer advocates taking that power away from them, leaving no constitutional principle safe from being eliminated because of the fleeting personal views of particular judges in particular times,” Severino said. 

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The Supreme Court’s approval has struck historic lows for more than two years. Breyer said he supports term limits for justices, but is wary that adding more seats to the high court would be a good reform. He also said he would be in favor of longer term limits to “alleviate the pressure” on justices. 

“You don’t want the person on the court thinking about what his next job is going to be after retiring, but it would alleviate the pressure — which is personal and comes from the condition that we all have, which is called mortality — when you decide what’s the right moment and so forth,” Breyer said.