Stephen Breyer

Stephen Breyer (circa 2006)

Stephen Gerald Breyer (born August 15, 1938 in San Francisco , California ) is an American lawyer and since 1994 a judge of the Supreme Court of the United States (Supreme Court) . He is considered to be part of the left ('liberal') wing of the court , along with judges Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor . On January 26, 2022, media reported that Breyer plans to retire from court "at the end of the current court year in June."

career

Breyer was born in San Francisco to middle-class Jewish parents. He attended Lowell High School and then studied at Stanford University and Magdalen College , Oxford University , graduating with a BA ( Bachelor of Arts ) degree. He earned his LLB ( Bachelor of Laws ) degree from Harvard .

In 1964 he served as a law clerk on the United States Supreme Court for Justice Arthur Goldberg . He then served in administration as a special assistant to the attorney general's office for competition law, as an assistant special prosecutor in the Watergate affair , and as legal counsel for the US Senate Judiciary Committee .

In 1967, Breyer married Joanna Hare, with whom he has three children. He was a professor at Harvard Law School from 1967 to 1994, also a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government from 1977 to 1980 , and a visiting professor at the College of Law of Sydney and the University of Rome . At Harvard, Breyer was known as a leading expert on administrative law .

From 1980 to 1994 he served as a judge at the Federal Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, which he also presided over from 1990 to 1994. As a member of the United States Sentencing Commission from 1985 to 1989, he played a key role in drafting the sentencing guidelines, which were intended to standardize the sentences pronounced in criminal cases. In 1982 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2004 into the American Philosophical Society .

In 1994, US President Bill Clinton nominated him to succeed Harry Blackmun as a US Supreme Court Justice. The US Senate confirmed Breyer in office by a vote of 87:9. As a result, Breyer was the youngest-serving Justice on the Supreme Court until confirmation by Judge John Roberts in 2005.

For 2019, Breyer was awarded the Manley O. Hudson Medal by the American Society for International Law (ASIL).

jurisprudence

Breyer is regarded as a pragmatic constitutional lawyer who is more interested in the continuity and coherence of the law than in dogmatic guidelines. For many years, he often voted like his fellow judges David Souter - until his resignation in August 2009 - and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who in this constellation, together with John Paul Stevens, were considered the left (in US parlance "liberal") wing of the court.

He has always been in favor of a constitutional right to abortion – since the Roe v. Wade (1973) one of the hottest topics in US politics – occurred. He is also regarded as an advocate of the equally controversial consideration of international law and foreign precedents. Breyer, on the other hand, is wary of constitutional limitations on law enforcement's powers and advocates restrained judicial review of legislative restrictions on freedom of expression under the First Amendment . On June 26, 2003, the Supreme Court, by a vote of six to three, invalidated the sodomy laws . Stephen Breyer represented the majority opinion.

Others

In October 2011, Breyer was appointed to the jury for the Pritzker Prize , the world's most prestigious award in the field of architecture.

factories

• The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics. Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2021, ISBN 978-0-674-26936-1 .
• The Court And The World: American Law and the New Global Realities. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2015, ISBN 978-1-101-94619-0 .
• Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View. Vintage, New York 2011, ISBN 978-0-307-39083-7 .
• Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution. Vintage, New York 2006, ISBN 978-0-307-27494-6 .

web links

Commons : Stephen Breyer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Stephen Gerald Breyer in Biographical Directory of Article III Federal Judges, 1789- present

itemizations

1. ↑ US Constitutional Judge Breyer retires , tagesspiegel.de, published and accessed January 26, 2022.
2. ↑ SZ/olkl/jael: Supreme Court: Liberal judge Stephen Breyer wants to stop. In: sueddeutsche.de . January 26, 2022, retrieved January 27, 2022 . 
3. ↑ Member History: Stephen Breyer. American Philosophical Society, accessed May 19, 2018 .