Breyer, Stephen G.

Breyer, Stephen G. (Gerald)

(1938–  ) Supreme Court justice; born in San Francisco. After graduating from Stanford, he was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University before taking a degree from Harvard Law School. He served as a law clerk to Justice Arthur Goldberg of the U.S. Supreme Court (1964–65) and spent much of the next 15 years as a lawyer in various federal positions, including the Watergate Special Prosecution Force (1973) and as chief counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee (1979–80). He also held various teaching posts at Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (1970–94). From 1980 to 1994 he served as a judge on the First Circuit Court of Appeals, becoming that court's chief judge in 1990. As an authority on government regulation and antitrust legislation, he contributed the legal framework to the deregulation of the airlines in the 1970s. In addition to his numerous articles, he wrote several books including Regulation and Its Reform (1982) and Breaking the Vicious Circle: Toward Effective Risk Regulation (1993). Widely known both for his grasp of the complexities of the law and for his ability to explain them in clear language, he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Clinton in 1994.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.