Stephen Gerald Breyer (born August 15, 1938) is a retired American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1994 until his retirement in 2022. He was nominated by President Bill Clinton, and replaced retiring justice Harry Blackmun. Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, was his designated successor. Breyer was generally associated with the liberal wing of the Court. He is now the Byrne Professor of Administrative Law and Process at Harvard Law School.
Easton Press Stephen Breyer books
Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution - Signed Limited Edition - 2006
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Justice Stephen Breyer
Following a clerkship with Supreme Court Associate Justice Arthur Goldberg in 1964, Breyer became well known as a law professor and lecturer at Harvard Law School, starting in 1967. There he specialized in administrative law, writing a number of influential textbooks that remain in use today. He held other prominent positions before being nominated for the Supreme Court, including special assistant to the United States Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust, assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force in 1973, and serving on the First Circuit Court of Appeals from 1980 to 1994.
In his 2005 book Active Liberty, Breyer made his first attempt to systematically lay out his views on legal theory, arguing that the judiciary should seek to resolve issues in a manner that encourages popular participation in governmental decisions.
Early Life
Breyer was born in San Francisco, the son of Anne A. (née Roberts) and Irving Gerald Breyer, and raised in a middle-class Jewish family. Irving Breyer was legal counsel for the San Francisco Board of Education. Both Breyer and his younger brother, Charles, who is a federal district judge, are Eagle Scouts of San Francisco's Troop 14. Breyer's paternal great-grandfather emigrated from Romania to the United States, settling in Cleveland, where Breyer's grandfather was born. In 1955, Breyer graduated from Lowell High School. At Lowell, he was a member of the Lowell Forensic Society and debated regularly in high school tournaments, including against future California governor Jerry Brown and future Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe.
Breyer received a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Stanford University, a Bachelor of Arts from Magdalen College at Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar, and a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) from Harvard Law School. He is also fluent in French.
In 1967, he married the Hon. Joanna Freda Hare, a psychologist and member of the British aristocracy, as the youngest daughter of John Hare, 1st Viscount Blakenham. The Breyers have three adult children: Chloe, an Episcopal priest and author of The Close; Nell, and Michael.
Legal career
Breyer served as a law clerk to Associate Justice Arthur Goldberg during the 1964 term (list), and served briefly as a fact-checker for the Warren Commission. He was a special assistant to the United States Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust from 1965 to 1967 and an assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force in 1973. Breyer was a special counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary from 1974 to 1975 and served as chief counsel of the committee from 1979 to 1980. He worked closely with the chairman of the committee, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, to pass the Airline Deregulation Act that closed the Civil Aeronautics Board.
Breyer was a lecturer, assistant professor, and law professor at Harvard Law School starting in 1967. He taught there until 1994, also serving as a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government from 1977 to 1980. At Harvard, Breyer was known as a leading expert on administrative law. While there, he wrote two highly influential books on deregulation: Breaking the Vicious Circle: Toward Effective Risk Regulation and Regulation and Its Reform. In 1970, Breyer wrote "The Uneasy Case for Copyright", one of the most widely cited skeptical examinations of copyright. Breyer was a visiting professor at the College of Law in Sydney, Australia, the University of Rome, and the Tulane University Law School.
Judicial career
From 1980 to 1994, Breyer was a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit; he was the court's Chief Judge from 1990 to 1994. In the last days of President Jimmy Carter's administration, on November 13, 1980, Carter nominated Breyer to the First Circuit, and the U.S. Senate confirmed him on December 9, 1980, by an 80–10 vote. He served as a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States between 1990 and 1994 and the United States Sentencing Commission between 1985 and 1989. On the sentencing commission, Breyer played a key role in reforming federal criminal sentencing procedures, producing the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which were formulated to increase uniformity in sentencing.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton considered him for the seat vacated by Byron White that ultimately went to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Breyer's appointment came shortly thereafter, however, following the retirement of Harry Blackmun in 1994, when Clinton nominated Breyer as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on May 13 of that year. Breyer was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in an 87 to 9 vote and took his seat August 3, 1994. Breyer was the second-longest-serving junior justice in the history of the Court, close to surpassing the record set by Justice Joseph Story of 4,228 days (from February 3, 1812, to September 1, 1823); Breyer fell 29 days short of tying this record, which he would have reached on March 1, 2006, had Justice Samuel Alito not joined the Court on January 31, 2006.
On January 27, 2022, Breyer and President Joe Biden announced Breyer's intention to retire from the Supreme Court. On February 25, 2022, Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and one of Breyer's former law clerks, to succeed him.
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