Justice Stephen Breyer: 'Reading the Constitution'

The Honorable Stephen Breyer is a retired associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Born in San Francisco in 1938, he is a graduate of Stanford, Oxford, and Harvard Law School. He has taught law for many years as a professor at Harvard Law School and at the Kennedy School of Government. He has also worked as a Supreme Court law clerk (for Justice Arthur Goldberg), a Justice Department lawyer (antitrust division), an assistant Watergate special prosecutor, and chief counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In 1980, he was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit by President Carter, becoming chief judge in 1990. In 1994, he was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Clinton. He has written books and articles about a range of legal topics, including administrative law, economic regulation, and the U.S. Constitution.  His books include Active Liberty (2005), Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View (2010), The Court and the World (2015), The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics (2021), and Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism (2024). His wife, Joanna, was born in Great Britain and is a retired clinical psychologist. They have three children—Chloe, Nell, and Michael—and six grandchildren.

Risa Goluboff, a Miller Center faculty senior fellow, is the David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law and a professor of history. She served as the 12th, and the first female, dean of the University of Virginia School of Law from 2016 to 2024. She is a nationally renowned legal historian whose scholarship and teaching focuses on American constitutional and civil rights law, especially their historical development in the 20th century. Prior to joining the UVA School of Law in 2002, Goluboff clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court. She holds an AB from Harvard University, an MA from Princeton University, a JD from Yale Law School, and a PhD from Princeton University.

Barbara A. Perry is the J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance at the Miller Center, where she co-directs the Presidential Oral History Program. She has authored or edited 17 books on presidents, First Ladies, the Kennedy family, the Supreme Court, and civil rights and civil liberties. Perry has conducted more than 150 interviews for the George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama Presidential Oral History Projects; interviewed President Bill Clinton; and directed the Edward Kennedy Oral History Project's conclusion. She served as a U.S. Supreme Court fellow and has worked for both Republican and Democratic members of the Senate. Perry earned a BA in political science from the University of Louisville, an MA in politics, philosophy, and economics from Oxford University, and a PhD in government from the University of Virginia.