A Report From The Front An Interview With Justice Stephen G. Breyer

In the spring of 2016, I interviewed Justice Stephen G. Breyer in his chambers at the Supreme Court.

- Ashish Joshi

He had recently published his latest book, The Court and the World (Knopf 2015). The book, widely acclaimed as original, far-reaching, and timely, examines the work of the Supreme Court in an increasingly interdependent and globalized world. Breyer, analyzing several key decisions of the Supreme Court, points out that as the world grows smaller - or, to quote Thomas Friedman, “flatter” - the Court’s horizons have inevitably expanded. Issues that used to or could be considered as “other people’s” problems are no longer considered as such; what happens in Thailand may very well have real consequences - monetary or otherwise - in Washington. And for that reason, the “foreign” aspect of the Supreme Court’s docket is on the rise. Breyer’s book attempts to answer the following question: How can America’s highest court decide American cases and interpret American laws so that they might work efficiently and in harmony with similar laws in other nations?

Justice Breyer received a BA in philosophy from Stanford University in 1959. He studied philosophy and economics at Oxford as a Marshall scholar and earned a law degree at Harvard. From 1964 to 1965, he clerked for Justice Arthur Goldberg. He was a special assistant to the U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust from 1965 to 1967 and an assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force in 1973. Breyer taught law at Harvard Law School from 1967 until 1994. He was chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1979 to 1980, and was then confirmed a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. After serving as chief judge of that court, he joined the Supreme Court in 1994.