Stephen Breyer

American jurist, nominated on 13 May 1994, about 4:00 PM, by President Clinton as the 108th Justice of the Supreme Court to fill the vacated seat of Harry Blakmun. Former chief counsel to the Senate Judicial Committee and a federal judge for 12 years, a lawyer and law professor, Breyer is a brilliant legal scholar with a playful intellect and winning personality. He supports free speech and is a financial conservative. Lawyers who have worked with him in New England praise him as quick, gregarious, scholarly and nonpartisan, if a bit imperious.

Financial disclosure forms show that he owns several million dollars in stocks and bonds and the Supreme Court annual salary of $164,000, yet he wears frayed suits, quite indifferent to style. With a scholarly manner, he has impressed and charmed scores of people scattered through the upper reaches of American law and politics. President Clinton found him the best possible candidate in spite of the fact that "the chemistry between them had been bad when they first met."

Breyer was raised in a modest, two-story home in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, the older of two boys who both became lawyers. Education came easily, along with Jewish religious school. His mom insisted that he also go out for sports and go to camp as well in order to have a well-rounded life. He attended Stanford University with post-grad work at Oxford, where he picked up a fascination with economics. He studied law at Harvard, where he also edited a law review. In the spring of 1984 Breyer received word that Goldberg had selected him as a clerk for the high court term beginning in October.

In 1967, he met his future wife, Joanna Hare, an Englishwoman and the daughter of Lord John Blakenham, leader of Britain's Conservative Party. She was then working as an assistant in the Washington office of London's Sunday Times and later became a psychologist.