According to www.supremecourt.gov, Breyer was born in San Francisco, California, August 15, 1938. 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.
On Immigration Issues
Justice Stephen Breyer joined the dissent in the Court's decision in Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting. The case involved an Arizona law called the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act. It authorizes state courts to suspend and revoke the business licenses of businesses that knowingly hire "unauthorized aliens."
The Court held:
"The federal law allows States to take licensing action. The word ‘license' includes the many forms of legal permission to perform an act, and therefore includes charters, articles of incorporation, etc. The AZ law relies only on determinations made by federal authorities of employment eligibility, and allows employers the same good faith defense as in federal law."
The dissent argued:
The Arizona law intrudes on Congress's balancing of immigration enforcement, burdens on employers and the prevention of discrimination, according to www.OnTheIssues.org.
Copyright 2012 CBS 5 (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved. OnTheIssues.org and Supremecourt.gov contributed to this report.
Justice Stephen Breyer
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