Can Stephen Breyer save the Obama agenda in the Supreme Court?

Jeffrey Toobin writing at The New Yorker: “If the Court had remained basically the same as the one Breyer joined in 1994, he might well have served out his tenure in genial anonymity . . . But his new colleagues and their allies are different from the conservatives who dominated the Court during the Rehnquist years. They are reviving a set of constitutional issues that looked, to Breyer and others, as though they had long been settled. And on these issues Breyer is not so cautious and not so cheerful, and he has sailed, with uncharacteristic zeal, straight into the fight . . . Obama’s agenda, at its core, relies on the administrative state to solve problems—in health care, the economy, and the environment. As a scholar and a judge, Breyer has spent his career trying to justify what this President is trying to do. ‘Every piece of important legislation that’s been passed so far will be challenged on constitutional grounds,’ Noah Feldman said. ‘With Stevens gone, Breyer is now the critical figure. He will remind everyone that regulation is a necessary component, when properly deployed, of good government.’”