WASHINGTON -- While Chief Justice John Roberts may have found last year's State of the Union address "troubling" for the public rebuke President Obama applied to the Supreme Court for its Citizens United decision, not everyone on the bench was disturbed.
Fellow Justice Stephen Breyer, in a rare television interview, said that he would attend the president's upcoming State of the Union address, and those thereafter. As for why, however, the reasoning was a bit surprising. It is important, Breyer explained, that in a visual society, people see that judges play a role in process of governance.
"My job ... is to write opinions," Breyer told "Fox News Sunday." "The job of 307 million Americans is to criticize those opinions. And what they say is up to them. And the words I write are carrying out my job under the law as best I see it. That's true of my colleagues too.
"Going to the State of the Union, I will go next year. I have gone every year. I think it is very, very, very, important, very important for us to show up at that State of the Union because people today, as you know, are more and more visual ... and what they see in front of them at that State of the Union is the federal government, every part, the president, the Congress, the cabinet, the military, and I would like them to see the judges too, because federal judges are also part of that government."