Recently retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has returned to Harvard Law School to teach as a professor, the university announced Friday.
Breyer both attended Harvard Law — graduating in 1964 — and taught there. He'll teach seminars, write books, found scholarships and contribute to the university's intellectual community, according to the announcement in Harvard Law Today.
"I am very pleased to return to Harvard to teach there and to write," Breyer told the publication. "Among other things, I will likely try to explain why I believe it important that the next generations of those associated with the law engage in work, and take approaches to law, that help the great American constitutional experiment work effectively for the American people.”
Breyer stepped down from the Supreme Court last month, after more than 27 years on the bench there, and helped swear in his successor, Ketanji Brown Jackson.
In his time on the court, he was an active and cheerful questioner during arguments, a frequent public speaker and quick with a joke, often at his own expense.
Breyer has published books on administrative policy and constitutional law and interpretation, as well as law review publications that span a wide range of subjects. He was appointed to the Byrne chair, a professorship once held by another person who went on to the Supreme Court, Felix Frankfurter, according to Harvard Law Today.
Harvard Law School Dean John Manning said he was thrilled to welcome the "world-class legal scholar" back.
"His brilliance, experience, collegiality, openness, and intellectual inquisitiveness will deeply enrich our community and advance our mission of teaching, scholarship, and service," Manning said in a statement.
Breyer graduated from Stanford University and Oxford University before attending Harvard Law School, where he worked on the law review. He went on to clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, then returned to Harvard Law from 1967 to 1980, where he was on the faculty and also served as special assistant to the U.S. attorney general for antitrust and special counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
