Politico: “When Stephen Breyer stepped down from the Supreme Court in June, he was obliged to pack up 28 years worth of memos, draft opinions, correspondence, notes and other real-time documentation of his tenure. But he was under no obligation whatsoever when it came to the question of what to do with the papers after that. Officially, the Court’s not saying what will become of Breyer’s material — covering behind-the-scenes activities surrounding every major case from Bush v. Gore to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. “I have no information to provide at this time regarding Justice Breyer’s papers,” says Patricia McCabe, the Court’s chief information officer. Kenneth Feinberg, the prominent Washington attorney and longtime close friend of Breyer, says that’s because no decision has been made. “The papers are still in his chambers,” Feinberg says, referring to the smaller office space retired justices are allotted. “He is undecided.” The decision on whether to provide answers to the most compelling questions about the court — Who penetrated its inner sanctum? What did the justices really think of each other, and of the momentous changes in the law that they engendered? Which biases and stray thoughts altered their decision-making? — will be Breyer’s alone. If the 84-year-old Breyer had retired from other senior government positions whose work impacts hundreds of millions of citizens, that decision wouldn’t really be up to him. The executive branch is subject to detailed rules laying out what work product must be preserved, when and how it must be released to the general public, and — as Donald Trump has unhappily learned — what happens to officials who don’t play ball. Not so for justices. Breyer, if he so chose, could toss his papers in a bonfire, auction them to the highest bidder, or ship them all to Mar-a-Lago for safekeeping. He could also hold onto them and pick and decide for himself just who gets to take a peek, ensuring that only ideologically friendly types can use the material for books and articles. In his will, he could appoint an executor to continue to enforce whatever standards he sees fit for decades or centuries to come. It’s none of your business…”