Breyer, Stephen G(erald) (1938– )

US Supreme Court associate justice. He served on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force in 1973. He contributed to the deregulation of the airlines in the 1970s. Able to grasp and clearly explain legal complexities, he was nominated to the US Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1994.

He was born in San Francisco. After graduating from Stanford University, 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 US Supreme Court and spent much of the next 15 years as a lawyer in various federal positions. He was chief counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1979. He also held various teaching posts at Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University 1967–94. From 1980 to 1994 he served as a judge on the First Circuit Court of Appeals, becoming that court's chief judge in 1990. He was an authority on government regulation and antitrust legislation. 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).