#His optimism gone free

Their three children - Chloe, Nell, and Michael - and six grandchildren have given so much to the country in sharing Justice Breyer with us. Joanna Breyer, have more than earned a new chapter. He has ensured the Court has been able to labor in good humor on the Bench and off.īut with so many years devoted to public service, he and his spouse, Dr. He has made the Court’s opinions stronger and collegiality richer. Justice Breyer leaves all of us with an enduring legacy of patriotism, collaboration, and decency that will stand as a model for jurists in our country and around the world. He has brought an inimitable blend of scholarship, insight, and superbly good judgment to our Bench. Justice Breyer has had the special joy of seeing one of his own outstanding law clerks, Ketanji Brown Jackson, succeed him as a Justice.įor all the ways in which Justice Breyer’s service has evoked his predecessors, he has also made enduring contributions all his own. After serving as Justice Goldberg’s law clerk, he enjoyed the distinct privilege, many years later, of ascending to his mentor’s seat. Fluent in multiple languages, Justice Breyer is a legal diplomat extraordinaire, literally writing the book - The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities - about how our Supreme Court works in an increasingly connected world. Like Arthur Goldberg, who left the Court to serve as the Ambassador of the United States to the United Nations, Justice Breyer has had vast influence across international borders. Both faculty and students will benefit enormously from that association. Upon his retirement from active service on the Court, Justice Breyer has returned to his academic home port as the Byrne Professor of Administrative Law and Process. For thirteen years before becoming a judge, Justice Breyer was a highly regarded member of Harvard Law School’s faculty. Like Felix Frankfurter, Justice Breyer has brought the perspective of a scholar and teacher to the Court’s discussions, sharing insights that extend far beyond the law. Consciously stripped clean of footnotes, his opinions provide a bounty of legal, scholarly, and factual content in accessible and measured prose. He writes with plainspoken clarity that is inviting to nonlawyers. Like Benjamin Cardozo, Justice Breyer has a love of the written word and has left us a treasure chest of opinions, articles, and books with a distinctive and memorable literary style. He has brought his own rich personal background - not just as lawyer and judge, but as Eagle Scout, Army reservist, Marshall Scholar, and Senate staffer - to resolve disputes large and small. In The Common Law, Holmes famously wrote that “he life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience.” Justice Breyer has taken that guidance to heart, applying abstract principles to particular facts and crafting workable legal guidance.

Like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Justice Breyer brought his life experience to bear on legal problems, reaching out to the public through books about the law that are both masterful and practical. Justice Breyer likewise has been a visionary force, seeking to brook differences while firmly adhering to his principles. But he emerged as a learned jurist with worldly insights who embraced the challenge of working together with his colleagues for the good of the Union. Story also came to the Court from Massachusetts, steeped in the culture of New England. In the course of his long service, he replicated Story’s unbounded energy and optimism in building agreement. Like Joseph Story, who filled the seat from 1812 to 1845, Justice Breyer has been an institutional anchor of the Court. Through his opinions from the bench, and in varied fora around the globe, Justice Breyer has eloquently championed both the need for individual liberty in shaping a just society and the obligation of every member of a self-governing people to help preserve it.

#His optimism gone free

As chief justice of Massachusetts’ supreme court, Cushing played a role in ending slavery in that state, writing that all are born free and equal and entitled to liberty. Like William Cushing, whom President Washington appointed as the inaugural holder of the seat in 1789, Justice Breyer has expressed a farsighted and humane understanding of constitutional law. He brought to the Court talents and perspective that harken back to past distinction and yet mark a path all his own. But Justice Breyer also stands tall among them.

That lineage is a reminder that every judge stands on the shoulders of those who served before.

Some of them - Story, Holmes, Cardozo - could be shorthand for greatness on the bench. His predecessors were particularly prominent jurists. He occupied a seat that has a lineage dating back to the Judiciary Act of 1789. Breyer retired from active service after nearly three decades as a member of the Supreme Court.