77 Facts About Stephen Breyer

Stephen Gerald Breyer is an American lawyer and retired jurist who served as an associate justice of the US Supreme Court from 1994 until his retirement in 2022.

Stephen Breyer was nominated by President Bill Clinton, and replaced retiring justice Harry Blackmun.

Stephen Breyer specialized in administrative law, writing textbooks that remain in use today.

Stephen Breyer held other prominent positions before being nominated to the Supreme Court, including special assistant to the United States assistant attorney general for antitrust and assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force in 1973.

Stephen Breyer became a federal judge in 1980, when he was appointed to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Stephen Breyer remained on the Supreme Court until June 30,2022, when Jackson succeeded him.

Stephen Breyer's father was a lawyer who served as legal counsel to the San Francisco Board of Education.

Stephen Breyer attended Lowell High School, where 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.

Stephen Breyer graduated in 1959 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with highest honors and membership in Phi Beta Kappa.

Stephen Breyer spent eight years in the United States Army Reserve during the Vietnam War, including six months on active duty in the Army Strategic Intelligence.

Stephen Breyer reached the rank of corporal and was honorably discharged in 1965.

In 1967, Stephen Breyer married Joanna Freda Hare, a psychologist and member of the British aristocracy, younger daughter of John Hare, 1st Viscount Blakenham and granddaughter of Richard Hare, 4th Earl of Listowel.

Stephen Breyer served briefly as a fact-checker for the Warren Commission, then spent two years in the US Department of Justice's Antitrust Division as a special assistant to its assistant attorney general.

In 1967, Stephen Breyer returned to Harvard Law School as an assistant professor.

Stephen Breyer taught at Harvard Law until 1980, and held a joint appointment at Harvard Kennedy School from 1977 to 1980.

At Harvard, Stephen Breyer was known as a leading expert on administrative law.

In 1970, Stephen Breyer wrote "The Uneasy Case for Copyright", one of the most widely cited skeptical examinations of copyright.

Stephen Breyer was a visiting professor at the College of Law in Sydney, Australia, the University of Rome, and the Tulane University Law School.

Stephen Breyer served as an assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force in 1973.

Stephen Breyer was a special counsel to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary from 1974 to 1975 and served as chief counsel of the committee from 1979 to 1980.

Stephen Breyer worked closely with the chairman of the committee, Senator Edward M Kennedy, to pass the Airline Deregulation Act that closed the Civil Aeronautics Board.

From 1980 to 1994, Stephen Breyer was a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit; he was the court's Chief Judge from 1990 to 1994.

Stephen Breyer 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.

Stephen Breyer was serving as the 12th United States Ambassador to the Organization of American States.

Stephen Breyer declined, and recommended Breyer and US representative Barbara Jordan.

Stephen Breyer was confirmed by the Senate on July 29,1994, by an 87 to 9 vote, and received his commission on August 3.

In 2015, Stephen Breyer broke a federal law that bans judges from hearing cases when they or their spouses or minor children have a financial interest in a company involved.

Stephen Breyer's wife sold about $33,000 worth of stock in Johnson Controls a day after Breyer participated in the oral argument.

Stephen Breyer wrote 551 opinions during his 28-year career, not counting those relating to orders or in the "shadow docket".

In 2000, Breyer wrote the majority opinion in Stenberg v Carhart, which struck down a Nebraska law banning partial-birth abortion.

Stephen Breyer was one of four justices who would have held the citizenship question unconstitutional in itself.

On December 18,2020, Breyer was one of three dissenters in Trump v New York.

On March 20,2012, Breyer wrote for a unanimous court in Mayo v Prometheus that patent claims relating to new diagnostic methods of natural phenomena were not patentable as they did not add an "inventive concept to application of the natural laws".

In Stephen Breyer's analysis, a doctor's administration of an already known drug related only to an identification of an "intended audience" to carry out the practice rather than a transformation of the subject.

On June 18,2015, Breyer wrote the majority opinion in Walker v Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Stephen Breyer wrote that license plates are considered governmental speech and are more subject to regulation than private speech.

On June 21,2011, Breyer wrote for the majority in Turner v Rogers on the requirement of counsel or some other safeguard in civil contempt cases.

On June 22,2015, Breyer wrote for the majority in Kingsley v Hendrickson that a pretrial detainee must prove that excessive police force was excessive only by an objective standard, not a subjective standard.

On February 21,2018, Breyer wrote for the majority in Class v United States on whether some who has already pleaded guilty may challenge a federal law's constitutionality.

On November 27,2001, Breyer wrote the majority opinion in Chickasaw Nation v United States, relating to whether tribes are liable for taxes on gambling operations.

Stephen Breyer reiterated this question in the context of the tribe's sovereignty as "Whether Congress has the constitutional power to relax restrictions that the political branches have, over time, placed on the exercise of a tribe's inherent legal authority".

Stephen Breyer concluded that the Indian Commerce Clause gives Congress the authority to legislate with respect to tribes and that Congress's amendments to the Indian Civil Rights Act constitute a deference to tribal sovereignty ensuring double jeopardy does not apply.

On March 4,2021, Stephen Breyer dissented in United States Fish and Wildlife Serv.

In Hollyfrontier Cheyenne Refining v Renewable Fuels Association, Breyer ruled for oil refineries, joining the majority opinion, which held that oil refineries struggling financially did not need a continuous exemption every year since 2011 in order to be granted an exemption from federal renewable fuels policy.

Stephen Breyer generally voted to uphold the Affordable Care Act since its passage in 2010.

Stephen Breyer said that Scalia's point will "inevitably be in the psychology" of his decision to retire.

Stephen Breyer said he took several factors into account when deciding his retirement plans, and reiterated that he did not plan to "die on the court".

The last opinion Breyer wrote before his retirement was the majority opinion in Torres v Texas Department of Public Safety.

Stephen Breyer retired on June 30,2022, at 12:00 noon EDT, following the court's final opinions and orders for the term.

Stephen Breyer's retirement left only one military veteran, Samuel Alito, on the Supreme Court.

On July 2,2022, it was announced that Stephen Breyer had been appointed Byrne Professor of Administrative Law and Process at Harvard Law School, with immediate effect.

Stephen Breyer had previously both attended and taught at Harvard Law School.

Stephen Breyer first returned to the bench in 2025 in the First Circuit Court of Appeals, the court on which he was a judge before his Supreme Court appointment.

Stephen Breyer attended the second inauguration of Donald Trump, appearing after the nine sitting Supreme Court justices.

Stephen Breyer consistently voted in favor of abortion rights, one of the most controversial areas of the Supreme Court's docket.

Stephen Breyer defended the Court's use of foreign law and international law as persuasive authority in its decisions.

Stephen Breyer is recognized as deferential to the interests of law enforcement and to legislative judgments in the Court's First Amendment rulings.

Stephen Breyer demonstrated a consistent pattern of deference to Congress, voting to overturn congressional legislation at a lower rate than any other Justice since 1994.

Stephen Breyer rejects the strict interpretation of the Sixth Amendment espoused by Justice Scalia that all facts necessary to criminal punishment must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

In many other areas on the Court, too, Stephen Breyer's pragmatism was considered the intellectual counterweight to Scalia's textualist philosophy.

In describing his interpretive philosophy, Stephen Breyer has sometimes noted his use of six interpretive tools: text, history, tradition, precedent, the purpose of a statute, and the consequences of competing interpretations.

Stephen Breyer has noted that only the last two differentiate him from textualists such as Scalia.

Stephen Breyer argues that these sources are necessary and in the former case, can in fact provide greater objectivity in legal interpretation than looking merely at what is often ambiguous statutory text.

Stephen Breyer expounded his judicial philosophy in 2005 in Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution.

Berlin termed this "negative liberty" and warned against its diminution; Stephen Breyer calls this "modern liberty".

For example, according to Peter Berkowitz, the reason that "[t]he primarily democratic nature of the Constitution's governmental structure has not always seemed obvious", as Stephen Breyer puts it, is "because it's not true, at least in Stephen Breyer's sense, that the Constitution elevates active liberty above modern [negative] liberty".

Berkowitz suggests that Stephen Breyer is inconsistent in failing to apply this standard to the issue of abortion, instead preferring decisions "that protect women's modern liberty, which remove controversial issues from democratic discourse".

In 2010, Stephen Breyer published a second book, Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View.

Textualists, like Scalia, only feel comfortable using the first four of these tools; while pragmatists, like Stephen Breyer, believe that "purpose" and "consequences" are particularly important interpretative tools.

Stephen Breyer cites several watershed moments in Supreme Court history to show why the consequences of a particular ruling should always be in a judge's mind.

Stephen Breyer cites the Dred Scott decision, an important precursor to the American Civil War.

In 2015, Stephen Breyer released a third book, The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities, examining the interplay between US and international law and how the realities of a globalized world need to be considered in US cases.

On March 26,2024, Stephen Breyer released a fourth book, Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism.

Stephen Breyer was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2004.

In 2007, Stephen Breyer was honored with the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award by the Boy Scouts of America.

Stephen Breyer appeared on Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN in September 2021 where he was questioned on when he planned to retire.

Stephen Breyer promoted his book The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics.