Stephen Gerald Breyer

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US Supreme Court justice from 1994 to 2022

Stephen Gerald Breyer (/ˈbraɪ.ər/ , BRY-ər ; born August 15, 1938) is an 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 . Breyer was generally associated with the liberal wing of the Court. Since his retirement, he has been the Byrne Professor of Administrative Law and Process at Harvard Law School .

Born in San Francisco , Breyer attended Stanford University and the University of Oxford , and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1964. After a clerkship with Associate Justice Arthur Goldberg in 1964–65, Breyer was a law professor and lecturer at Harvard Law School from 1967 until 1980. He specialized in administrative law , writing textbooks that remain in use today. He 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. Breyer became a federal judge in 1980, when he was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit . In his 2005 book _Active Liberty _, Breyer made his first attempt to systematically communicate his views on legal theory, arguing that the judiciary should seek to resolve issues in a manner that encourages popular participation in governmental decisions.

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

Breyer wrote majority opinions in landmark Supreme Court cases such as _Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. _, _United States v. Lara _, and _Google v. Oracle _ and notable dissents questioning the constitutionality of the death penalty in cases such as _Glossip v. Gross _.

Early life and education

Breyer in the Stanford University yearbook, 1959

Breyer was born on August 15, 1938, in San Francisco, California, to Anne A. (née Roberts) and Irving Gerald Breyer.

Breyer's paternal great-grandfather emigrated from Romania to the United States, settling in Cleveland, Ohio, where Breyer's grandfather was born. Breyer was raised in a middle-class Reform Jewish family.

His father was a lawyer who served as legal counsel to the San Francisco Board of Education .

Breyer and his younger brother Charles Breyer , who later became a federal district judge , were active in the Boy Scouts of America and achieved the Eagle Scout rank.

In 2007, he received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award . 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 .

After graduating from high school in 1955, Breyer studied philosophy at Stanford University . He graduated in 1959 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with highest honors and membership in Phi Beta Kappa . Breyer was awarded a Marshall Scholarship , which he used to study philosophy, politics, and economics at Magdalen College, Oxford , receiving a B.A. with [first-class honors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_undergraduate_degree_classification#D

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