Stephen Gerald Breyer (/ˈbraɪ.ər/ BRY-ər; born August 15, 1938) is an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1994 until his retirement in 2022.

In his 2005 book Active Liberty, Breyer made his first attempt to systematically communicate his views on legal theory, arguing that the judiciary should seek to resolve issues in a manner that encourages popular participation in governmental decisions.

[5] On February 25, 2022, Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and one of Breyer's former law clerks, to succeed him.

B.L., United States v. Lara, and Google v. Oracle and notable dissents questioning the constitutionality of the death penalty in cases such as Glossip v. Gross.

[28] In 1993, on the recommendation of Orrin Hatch, President Bill Clinton considered both Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg for the seat vacated by Byron White.

President Jimmy Carter had nominated Arnold to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, and the Senate confirmed him on February 20, 1980.

But after heavy lobbying by Senators Ted Kennedy and Tom Harkin, Clinton met with Breyer again and proceeded to nominate him as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court on May 17, 1994.

In 2015, Breyer broke a federal law that bans judges from hearing cases when they or their spouses or minor children have a financial interest in a company involved.

This brought him back into compliance and he joined the majority in ruling in favor of the interests of a Johnson Controls subsidiary which was party to FERC v. Electric Power Supply Ass'n.

Breyer reaffirmed the "benefits and burdens" test he had created in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, which struck down a nearly identical abortion law in Texas.

[42] In 2012, he expressed a similar idea in his dissent in Golan v. Holder, which affirmed the constitutionality of the application of Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act of 1994.

[46] In Breyer's analysis, a doctor's administration of an already known drug related only to an identification of an "intended audience" to carry out the practice rather than a transformation of the subject.

"[52] In July 2020, Breyer reiterated this position, writing, "As I have previously written, the solution may be for this Court to directly examine the question whether the death penalty violates the Constitution.

[59][60] Despite this, Breyer stipulated that the utterance of profanity on social media did not constitute "substantial disruptance" of a school activity or threaten harm to others, writing, "the justifications offered for punishing Levy's speech were simply insufficient […] were she an adult, the First Amendment would provide strong protection".

[63] In his opinion, he acknowledged that a right to counsel does not exist in all matters relating to incarceration, as in civil contempt cases the defendant's opponent is also often unrepresented, the arguments typically center on straightforward questions, and substitute safeguards are available.

[67] In his opinion, he wrote that the Due Process Clause protects pretrial detainees from "objectively unreasonable" force by a state actor.

A guilty plea does not bar a direct appeal in these circumstances.”[74][75] On November 27, 2001, Breyer wrote the majority opinion in Chickasaw Nation v. United States, relating to whether tribes are liable for taxes on gambling operations.

[77] Breyer wrote that a straightforward reading of the code, which stipulated that the "reporting and withholding of taxes" on gambling operations applied equally to both the states and tribes, was "included inadvertently.

[83] The Court ruled that the County of Maui must have a permit under the Clean Water Act in order to release groundwater pollution into the ocean.

[84] On July 31, 2020, Breyer dissented when the Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision, refused to lift a stay on the 9th Circuit ruling that halted construction of the wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Sierra Club argued that the wall would harm the environment unduly, including threatening wildlife and changing the flow of water in the Sonoran Desert.

To the contrary, our cases have consistently spoken of the need to assert an injury that is the result of a statute's actual or threatened enforcement, whether today or in the future.

Along with Justice John Paul Stevens, Breyer would also have ruled in favor of plaintiffs' claims that Texas's statewide plan was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.

Breyer joined another dissent by Ginsburg in RNC v. DNC, which overturned a lower court's extension of a voting deadline in the Wisconsin primary elections.

[95] The lower court had extended the deadline so that people who had not yet received mail-in ballots by April 7 could vote by mail in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He rejects the strict interpretation of the Sixth Amendment espoused by Justice Scalia that all facts necessary to criminal punishment must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

Breyer argues that these sources are necessary, however, and in the former case (purpose), can in fact provide greater objectivity in legal interpretation than looking merely at what is often ambiguous statutory text.

[127] In it, he argues that judges have six tools they can use to determine a legal provision's proper meaning: (1) its text; (2) its historical context; (3) precedent; (4) tradition; (5) its purpose; and (6) the consequences of potential interpretations.

In an interview about the book, he said that textualism, a judicial philosophy conservative justices favor, "will not help achieve the goals of those who write statutes or those who wrote and adopted the Constitution" and is doomed to fail.

[133] In an interview on Fox News Sunday on December 12, 2010, Breyer said that based on the values and the historical record, the Founding Fathers of the United States never intended guns to go unregulated and that history supports his and the other dissenters' views in District of Columbia v. Heller.