To conclude the National Constitution Center’s week-long celebration of Constitution Day and to celebrate the launch of our Constitution 101 course, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer (Ret.) joined Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the NCC, for a private conversation with middle and high school students about the importance of civics education in America. Justice Breyer recently joined Justice Neil Gorsuch as honorary co-chair of the National Constitution Center.
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This episode was produced by Melody Rowell and engineered by the NCC’s AV team. Research was provided by Sam Desai.
Participants
Stephen Breyer (Retired), Associate Justice, was born in San Francisco, California, on August 15, 1938. He married Joanna Hare in 1967, and has three children—Chloe, Nell, and Michael. He received an A.B. from Stanford University, a B.A. from Magdalen College, Oxford, and an LL.B. from Harvard Law School. He served as a law clerk to Justice Arthur Goldberg of the Supreme Court of the United States during the 1964 Term, as a Special Assistant to the Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Antitrust, 1965–1967, as an Assistant Special Prosecutor of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, 1973, as Special Counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, 1974–1975, and as Chief Counsel of the committee, 1979–1980. He was an Assistant Professor, Professor of Law, and Lecturer at Harvard Law School, 1967–1994, a Professor at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, 1977–1980, and a Visiting Professor at the College of Law, Sydney, Australia, and at the University of Rome. From 1980–1990, he served as a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and as its Chief Judge, 1990–1994. He also served as a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States, 1990–1994, and of the United States Sentencing Commission, 1985–1989. President Clinton nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat August 3, 1994. Justice Breyer retired from the Supreme Court on June 30, 2022.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
- Stephen Breyer, The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics
- National Constitution Center, Constitution 101
- National Constitution Center, Founders’ Library
- Jeffrey Rosen, The Atlantic, "The Court Loses Its Chief Pragmatist"
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript may not be in its final form, accuracy may vary, and it may be updated or revised in the future.
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