Via WJLA, the AP is reporting that Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Stephen Breyer was robbed while on vacation in the Caribbean:

Spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said Breyer, wife Joanna and guests were confronted by the robber around 9 p.m. Thursday in the home Breyer owns on the Caribbean island of Nevis.

Arberg said the intruder took about $1,000 in cash and no one was hurt. She said the robbery was reported to local authorities, but she did not know if an arrest has been made.

The robbery of a Supreme Court justice is not without precedent. Retired justice David Souter was assaulted by a group of teenagers while on a jog near his home in Southwest in D.C. in 2004. Other justices have been the victims of crime, reported USA Today at the time:

In 1996, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s purse was snatched as she was returning home from a Georgetown restaurant. She was shaken up but not harmed.

In 1985, a bullet shattered a window at the suburban Virginia apartment of Justice Harry Blackmun. Police said it appeared to be a random shot fired from a long distance.

One of the more startling attacks occurred in Salt Lake City in 1982, when Justice Byron White was punched in the head by a man who rushed up from the audience during a speech. White was not seriously hurt. As he went on with his speech, White, a former football star who played for the University of Colorado, reportedly said, “I’ve been hit harder than that before in Utah.”

It’s probably worth mentioning that former Chief Justice William Rehnquist was a perpetrator of fashion crime when he added those gold stripes to his black robe.

When not traveling in an official capacity, all but Chief Justice John Roberts tend to go without security. When I lived on Capitol Hill I would often see Sandra Day O’Connor shopping at the Safeway on 14th Street SE, pushing her cart in relative anonymity through the supermarket’s aisles.

Of course, where Breyer’s robbery might be a first is that the perpetrator had a machete.