Stephen Breyer

Stephen Gerald Breyer was born on August 15, 1938, in San Francisco, and served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1994 until his retirement in 2022, nominated by President Bill Clinton to succeed Justice Harry Blackmun. Before his appointment he taught administrative law at Harvard Law School, served as assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and sat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit from 1980. Generally associated with the Courts liberal wing, he set out his view that judges should interpret the law to encourage active democratic participation in his 2005 book Active Liberty, and he wrote majority opinions in cases including Google v. Oracle and notable dissents questioning the constitutionality of the death penalty. He retired in 2022 and was succeeded by Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of his own former law clerks, and now teaches as the Byrne Professor of Administrative Law and Process at Harvard Law School.