Bill Clinton: “Good afternoon. Today I am proud to nominate Judge Stephen Breyer to serve on the United States Supreme Court. I believe…”

“Good afternoon. Today I am proud to nominate Judge Stephen Breyer to serve on the United States Supreme Court. I believe a President can best serve our country by nominating a candidate for the Supreme Court whose experience manifests the quality in a Justice that matters most, excellence: excellence in knowledge, excellence in judgment, excellence in devotion to the Constitution, to the country, and to the real people. It is a duty best exercised wisely and not in haste. I have reflected on this decision now for the last several weeks, about 37 days. I have been well served by the White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler, and the other members of our legal staff who have worked very hard, by our Chief of Staff, Mr. McLarty, who's kept the process going in an orderly way, and by others who worked on it. We have worked hard to achieve the pursuit of excellence. In that pursuit, I came again to Judge Breyer, who serves today, as most of you know, as the chief judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the first circuit. And I will nominate him to be the Supreme Court's 108th Justice. Without dispute, he is one of the outstanding jurists of our age. He has a clear grasp of the law, a boundless respect for the constitutional and legal rights of the American people, a searching and restless intellect, and a remarkable ability to explain complex subjects in understandable terms. He has proven that he can build an effective consensus and get people of diverse views to work together for justice's sake. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford, a graduate of Oxford University, a magna cum laude graduate of the Harvard Law School. He served the late Justice Goldberg as a law clerk, spent 2 years in the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, and served as chief counsel of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, where he had the opportunity to work with Senators of both parties. Judge Breyer has had a private law practice, has written dozens of scholarly articles, published in distinguished law reviews and legal texts. And he's been a member of the Federal Sentencing Commission. For more than a decade he served with true distinction on the U.S. Court of Appeals in the First Circuit. His writings in areas ranging from the interpretation of legislation and analysis of the sentencing guidelines to the underpinnings, regulation, and the interplay of economics and the law reveal a keen and vital mind. His record displays a thirst for justice. His career personifies both public service and patriotism. As you know, I had a wealth of talent to choose from in making this nomination. In addition to Judge Breyer, whom I considered very seriously for this position the last time I had a Supreme Court appointment, I'd like to take just a moment to comment on two of the gentlemen who made this decision a difficult one for me. Secretary Babbitt was attorney general and Governor of his State, and during that time, a colleague of mine. He was a candidate for the Presidency in a race which everyone acknowledged raised the serious and substantive issues of the day. He has been a very effective Secretary of the Interior for me, one of the most sensitive, complex, and difficult posts in this administration. He would bring to the Court the responsibility and discipline of service in public life. He would bring a feel for law at the State level and, most important perhaps, for life at the grassroots. Although I know he would be a good addition, indeed, a superb addition to the Court, frankly, I came to the same conclusion I have every time I've thought about him: I couldn't bear to lose him from the Cabinet, from his service at Interior, from his service as an adviser to me and a vital and leading member of our domestic policy team. Judge Richard Arnold, the chief judge of the eighth circuit, has been a friend of mine for a long time. I have the greatest respect for his intellect, for his role as a jurist, and for his extraordinary character. I think a measure of the devotion and the admiration in which he is held is evidenced by the fact that somewhere around 100 judges, one-eighth of the entire Federal bench, wrote me endorsing his candidacy for the Supreme Court. But as has been widely reported in the press, Judge Arnold has cancer and is now undergoing a course of treatment. I have every confidence that that treatment will be successful. And if I am fortunate enough to have other opportunities to make appointments to the Court, I know I will be able to consider Judge Arnold at the top of the list. Five decades ago, Judge Learned Hand defined the spirit of liberty as the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women, the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own bias, the spirit which lies hidden in the aspirations of us all. When our citizens hear about Judge Breyer's nomination and learn about his background and beliefs, I believe they will join me in saying, here is someone touched by that spirit of liberty, who believes in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, who is graced with the intellectual capacity and the good judgment a Supreme Court Justice ought to have, and whose background and temperament clearly qualify him to be an outstanding Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. So I will send his nomination to the Senate for confirmation with great pride and high hopes.”