Justice Stephen Breyer is known for letting his flamboyant intellect shine on the bench. And, according to those who clerked for him, Breyer’s personality outside of the courtroom was no different.
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It was reported today that this will be the 27-year veteran of the Supreme Court’s final term. To learn more about who Breyer is, we spoke with some of the attorneys who clerked for the Justice over the years.
Breyer was described as someone with an insatiable, extroverted mind, who thrived on conversation—sometimes to a fault. Andrew Crespo, a former clerk and current Harvard Law School professor, said going to lunch with the Justice required finding a restaurant with lots of space “so that, when we’re sitting down and he’s telling us all these stories about the Court, that we weren’t accidentally sitting next to a reporter.”
In this special episode of our Cases & Controversies podcast, former Breyer clerks share stories from their time at the Court and about the man they describe as a “happy warrior,” who remained optimistic despite a tenure spent, for the most part, in the Court’s ideological minority.
In this episode we hear from:
- Danielle Gray, global chief legal officer for
Walgreens Boots Alliance - Pratik Shah, a partner at the firm Akin Gump
- Brianne Gorod, chief counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center
- Andrew Crespo, a professor at Harvard Law School
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