Pratik Shah and Aileen McGrath Discuss Justice Breyer’s Retirement with Media

Akin Gump Supreme Court and appellate practice head Pratik Shah and senior counsel Aileen McGrath have been quoted regarding the announcement of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement. Shah and McGrath are both former law clerks to Breyer.

Speaking on Breyer’s pragmatism with regard to the interpretation of statutes and the U.S. Constitution, Shah told The National Law Journal, in its article “Justice Stephen Breyer, Pragmatist & Consensus-Seeker, Will Retire,” that his approach “accounts for our society’s evolving problems in a manner that originalism fails to do. And it derives from Justice Breyer’s fundamental belief, grounded in a faith and optimism we can all use now more than ever, that our democracy is better off when all its citizens are empowered to participate.” Shah, in The American Lawyer article “What the Litigators Among Justice Breyer’s Clerk Family Tree Picked Up From the Noted Pragmatist,” also commented on Breyer’s collegial approach to his work as an appellate advocate, which he seeks to emulate in his own practice.

McGrath, in Law360’s article “Ex-Breyer Clerks Praise Jurist As Consensus Builder,” reminisced on Breyer’s stories of working with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and the impact it had on his approach to his service on the bench. She said, “He was a proven consensus-builder who always strove to resolve disputes and find middle grounds. He instilled in all of us a belief in talking things through, seeing things from someone else's perspective, and making compromises — values that have at times gotten lost in our increasingly caustic national discourse.”

Shah echoed this sentiment in The Wall Street Journal’s “Justice Breyer’s Retirement Could Reshape Supreme Court’s Liberal Wing,” saying, “Justice Breyer did view himself as a consensus builder of sorts. Obviously the court has moved to the right during his time on the court and that role is harder to play.”

Additionally, Shah commented on some of Breyer’s most significant opinions, including those of Stenberg v. Carhart, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 and National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, in Law360’s article “5 Breyer Opinions You Need To Know.”

Shah also appeared on Bloomberg’s Cases & Controversies podcast to speak on his experiences while clerking for Justice Breyer. Click here to listen.

Lastly, SCOTUSblog published tributes to Justice Breyer from Shah and McGrath titled “Life lessons from Justice Breyer” and "Always an optimist, always a teacher," respectively.