Word: breyers
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...Breyer's critics consider him brilliant but passionless, given to formulas and fine distinctions but lacking an overall vision of the Constitution. "It was no coincidence," says a colleague on the Harvard Law faculty, "that he only taught antitrust and administrative law." (Breyer also carved out a course area for himself in economic regulation.) As a judge he has shown little interest in such issues as civil rights, privacy or the First Amendment, which have provided most of the fireworks on the high court for the past four decades. The First Circuit of Appeals in Boston, where he sits...
Though he is presumed to support abortion rights, for instance, Breyer seems unlikely to defend them as vigorously as Blackmun, who wrote Roe v. Wade. In 1990 Breyer rejected a Bush Administration "gag rule" that would have prevented the staff at federally supported family-planning clinics from even mentioning abortion. But a year earlier he dissented from a ruling that . granted a new hearing on the burdens imposed by a law requiring that minors notify both parents before undergoing an abortion. Accordingly, abortion- rights groups are viewing him with some trepidation...
...court where power is already settling into the hands of an expanding group of moderates, Breyer's carefully parsed jurisprudence might prove more persuasive than an impassioned style in easing the moderates in the liberal direction many Clinton supporters are hoping for. That could be the President's hope. After the long, bumpy and very public selection process last year that ended with the appointment of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, he told a roomful of his aides, "That just goes to show that if you give me enough time to make me feel great down here," -- holding his gut -- "it will...
Will Stephen Breyer be a leader on this court? If so, it may take a while. His vaunted consensus-building skills, honed as chief counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee and polished on a federal court of appeals, have been singled out as the factor most likely to make him a star in his new job. But that is a little like ballyhooing the passing skills of a college quarterback: no matter how good he is, he may well play backup his first year in the pros...
Every hierarchy has its version of freshman hazing, and the court, in its staid way, has traditions for its junior member to ponder. Like the youngest child at table, Breyer will find himself seated far from Chief Justice William Rehnquist, to his extreme left. During the court's conference-room discussions of each case, he will always speak last. Indeed, in the past, the junior member was said to serve as something of an errand boy, "ordering out" for salient documents, expected to open the door for colleagues and, absent a staff member, taking their messages...