Breyer, Stephen

Breyer, Stephen (Gerald)

(born Aug. 15, 1938, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.) U.S. jurist. He received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1964. After clerking for Arthur Goldberg (1964–65), he taught at Harvard (1967–81). He served as special counsel (1974–75) and chief counsel (1979–81) of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee before being appointed to the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (1980); he became its chief judge in 1990. From 1985 to 1989 he served on the commission that devised guidelines for federal sentencing. He was nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1994 by Pres. Bill Clinton. He was known as a pragmatic moderate acceptable to both Republicans and Democrats.