Ex-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Breyer to teach at Harvard Law

By Karen Sloan

(Reuters) - Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has joined the Harvard Law School faculty, the school said Friday.

Breyer retired from the Supreme Court on June 30 after 27 years. He graduated from Harvard Law in 1964 and was previously on its faculty from 1967 until 1980, when then-President Jimmy Carter appointed him to the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals.

He is slated to teach seminars and reading groups, and will continue to write books and produce scholarship, the law school said.

At 83, Breyer was the Supreme Court’s oldest justice when he stepped down. He often found himself in dissent as the court moved rightward, including when its conservative majority last month overturned the constitutional right to abortion recognized in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. That decision upheld a Mississippi ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Harvard named Breyer its Byrne professor of administrative law and process, a title he shares with Professor Todd Rakoff and which was previously held by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, who left the school in 1939 to join the high court.

“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 said in a statement.

Harvard Law has strong ties to the Supreme Court. Four of the sitting justices graduated from the Cambridge, Massachusetts, school, including its former dean, Elena Kagan.

(Reporting by Karen Sloan; Editing by David Bario and Jonathan Oatis)