Stephen Breyer, 83, appears to be stepping off the United States Supreme Court. The oldest member,* Breyer said recently he did not intend to “die on the Court,” though it was not clear he would retire so soon.

Breyer was nominated by Bill Clinton and got 87 Senate votes for confirmation, a result that seems fantastical given today’s politics. Breyer grew up in California, attended Stanford, and then went on to Oxford to study philosophy and economics. Breyer eventually graduated from Harvard Law, where he was editor of the review. Breyer later clerked for Justice Arthur Goldberg on the Supreme Court and eventually taught at his alma mater, where he maintained a faculty post throughout his career.

As a jurist, Breyer argued for a strong understanding of the founding, but suffused with a respect for the practical political, social, and economic results of Court decisions. While he mostly landed in the progressive camp, he often got there in his own way. Famously, Breyer was the vote that split the Court on two Ten Commandments cases handed down the same day in 2005. In McCreary County v. ACLU and Van Orden v. Perry, Breyer saw two different displays of the Ten Commandments on government property. One was inside a courthouse (McCreary), while another was on the lawn of a state capitol (Van Orden). For Breyer, the location, elapsed time of installation, and intention behind the displays were all critical in deciding one was constitutional (Van Orden), while the other (McCreary) was not. The eight other members of the Court were settled on the issue, that the displays were either both acceptable or both intolerable, based on their conceptions of the Establishment Clause, history, and current reality, but not Breyer. He split the difference.

Replacing Breyer should be simple if the Democrats can stay on one page. They have 50 seats in the Senate and a reliable tie-breaker in the Vice President. Though the timing could make this more challenging than normal. After spending the last several months excoriating Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) for their refusal to abolish the filibuster, agree to the John Lewis Act in its entirety, as well as Build Back Better, Democrats will now need them desperately to support whatever nominee President Biden puts forward. It is possible this could temper Biden’s choice, but it is more likely Sinema and Manchin will play ball on this nomination as a way to assuage traditional Democrats and squeeze some concessions on other matters.

*Justice Clarence Thomas has longest tenure on the Court at the moment. Thomas was confirmed in 1991, while Breyer was confirmed in 1994.