Stephen Breyer

Biography

Stephen Breyer was born in San Francisco in 1938 and raised in a Reform Jewish family; his father was counsel to the city's Board of Education. He studied philosophy at Stanford, took a Marshall Scholarship to read philosophy, politics and economics at Magdalen College, Oxford, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1964. He served in the Army Reserve, clerked for Justice Arthur Goldberg, and spent two years in the Justice Department's Antitrust Division.

Breyer taught at Harvard Law School from 1967 to 1980 and became a leading authority on administrative law and regulation. He took leave to work as an assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force in 1973 and as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where as chief counsel under Edward Kennedy he helped pass airline deregulation.

President Carter appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in 1980, and he was its chief judge from 1990 to 1994. He also sat on the U.S. Sentencing Commission while it drafted the first federal sentencing guidelines. Nominated by Bill Clinton to succeed Harry Blackmun, he was confirmed to the Supreme Court in July 1994.

Over 28 years on the Court Breyer was a pragmatic member of its liberal wing, set out his philosophy in Active Liberty (2005), and wrote notable opinions on abortion, the death penalty and free speech. He retired on 30 June 2022, succeeded by his former clerk Ketanji Brown Jackson, and returned to Harvard Law School as Byrne Professor of Administrative Law and Process.