Stephen Breyer
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40 free Stephen Breyer trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Stephen Breyer spent nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, but the most memorable facts about him often have little to do with rulings. He collected injuries from a favorite pastime, lived through a frightening robbery on vacation, and once gamely lost a radio quiz in front of a national audience. This quiz covers the whole story: his childhood and schooling, the mentors and politicians who shaped his career, the presidents who put him on the bench, and the opinions and dissents he is remembered for, from student speech and software to religion in public life. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so the fun facts stick. It is pitched for curious readers, civics students and court watchers alike. Some questions are easy wins; others reward anyone who followed his years as a justice closely.
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Q 01Stephen Breyer and his brother Charles both earned which rank in the Boy Scouts of America as boys?
Eagle Scout
Eagle Scout is the rank both Breyer brothers reached, and in 2007 Stephen received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award, given for eminence in a later career.
Q 02Which former Stephen Breyer law clerk took over his Supreme Court seat when he retired?
Ketanji Brown Jackson
Ketanji Brown Jackson clerked for Breyer from 1999 to 2000, then replaced her old boss 22 years later as the first Black woman on the Court.
Q 03Which hobby left Stephen Breyer with a punctured lung, a broken collarbone and a replaced shoulder?
Bicycling
Bicycling injured Breyer badly three times: a car hit him in 1993, he broke his collarbone in 2011, and a 2013 fall on the National Mall led to shoulder surgery.
Q 04An intruder robbed Stephen Breyer at his Caribbean vacation home in 2012 while armed with which weapon?
A machete
A machete was the weapon, and the robber fled the Breyers' house on the island of Nevis with about $1,000 in cash, leaving everyone unharmed.
Q 05Stephen Breyer interviewed for a Supreme Court seat in 1993, but the nomination went to whom instead?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Bader Ginsburg got the 1993 nomination; Breyer had interviewed while short of breath and in pain from an injury days earlier, and his own turn came a year later.
Q 06As a young law professor, Stephen Breyer was an assistant special prosecutor on which political scandal?
Watergate
Watergate pulled Breyer out of the classroom in 1973, when he joined the special prosecution force during one of several leaves for government service.
Q 07Which president first put Stephen Breyer on the bench, fourteen years before his Supreme Court nomination?
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter nominated Breyer to an appeals court nine days after losing the 1980 election, and the Senate still confirmed him 80 to 10 within a month.
Q 08Stephen Breyer's younger brother Charles followed him into the law and took which job in California?
Federal judge
Federal judge became Charles Breyer's title too, on a district court, and Stephen stepped aside from appeals of cases his brother had tried.
Q 09Stephen Breyer's 2021 opinion in Google v. Oracle let Android reuse code from which programming language?
Java
Java interfaces copied into Android counted as fair use, Breyer wrote for the majority, comparing that kind of code to a library's Dewey Decimal System.
Q 10Stephen Breyer's 2021 Mahanoy opinion sided with a cheerleader punished for a profane post on which app?
Snapchat
Snapchat is where the student vented off campus after missing the varsity squad, and Breyer wrote that schools generally cannot punish that kind of speech.
Q 11Which president nominated Stephen Breyer to the Supreme Court, where he then served for 28 years?
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton chose Breyer in 1994, and the Senate confirmed him 87 to 9, helped by goodwill from both parties for his earlier work as a Senate lawyer.
Q 12Stephen Breyer was born in which California city, where his father was the school board's lawyer?
San Francisco
San Francisco is where Breyer grew up and attended Lowell High School, debating against a future governor of the state, Jerry Brown.
Q 13In his final term, Stephen Breyer co-wrote a joint dissent against the overturning of which landmark ruling?
Roe v. Wade
Q 21Stephen Breyer took the Supreme Court seat of which Nixon appointee, who retired in 1994?
Harry Blackmun
Harry Blackmun, chosen by a Republican president, had become one of the Court's most liberal justices, the wing Breyer then joined.
Q 22Fresh out of law school, Stephen Breyer clerked for which Supreme Court justice, a former labor secretary?
Arthur Goldberg
Arthur Goldberg left the Court in 1965, right after Breyer's clerkship year, to become ambassador to the United Nations.
Q 23Before joining the Justice Department, Stephen Breyer briefly worked as a fact-checker for which 1960s federal inquiry?
Warren Commission
Roe v. Wade fell in the Dobbs decision days before Breyer left the bench, and he, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan signed a single dissent together.
Q 14Stephen Breyer was seen as the intellectual counterweight to which conservative justice, a champion of textualism?
Antonin Scalia
Antonin Scalia set out his method in a 1997 book, and the book Breyer published eight years later is widely read as a reply to it.
Q 15Stephen Breyer was the swing vote in 2005 that kept which religious display on the Texas State Capitol grounds?
Ten Commandments
Ten Commandments displays split the Court twice in one day: Breyer voted to keep the Texas monument, in place since 1961, but against copies hung in Kentucky courthouses.
Q 16In his 2015 Glossip v. Gross dissent, Stephen Breyer argued that which punishment is probably unconstitutional?
The death penalty
The death penalty itself, not just the lethal injection drug at issue, was Breyer's target, and he read his dissent aloud from the bench when the ruling was announced.
Q 17Stephen Breyer was one of four dissenters in which 2000 case that halted a presidential election recount?
Bush v. Gore
Bush v. Gore ended Florida's recount, though Breyer and David Souter had proposed letting the state finish it under one uniform statewide standard.
Q 18Stephen Breyer earned a first-class degree in philosophy, politics and economics at which English university?
Oxford
Oxford hosted Breyer for two years at Magdalen College between his American degrees, and he later married into a British family.
Q 19As a Senate lawyer, Stephen Breyer helped shape a 1978 law that deregulated which American industry?
Airlines
Airlines lost the federal board that had decided which routes each carrier could fly; the 1978 act phased it out, and it shut its doors for good at the end of 1984.
Q 20Stephen Breyer was the first Supreme Court justice to play an NPR comedy news quiz, where his questions covered what?
Rock stars
Rock stars were the subject when Breyer played Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! in 2007, a show his brother had volunteered him for.
Warren Commission staff produced the 888-page report on the 1963 assassination of the president, and Breyer's fact-checking stint came just before his antitrust job.
Q 24Stephen Breyer served as chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee under which Massachusetts senator?
Ted Kennedy
Ted Kennedy chaired the committee and, in 1994, lobbied hard for his former counsel to get the Supreme Court nomination.
Q 25Stephen Breyer studied philosophy at which California university, graduating in 1959 with highest honors?
Stanford
Stanford gave Breyer a philosophy degree and Phi Beta Kappa membership before he went abroad for a second bachelor's degree.
Q 26Which award, a British thank-you for postwar American aid, paid for Stephen Breyer's studies in England?
Marshall Scholarship
Marshall Scholarship awards were created by the British Parliament in 1953, and the program later gave Breyer a medal for strengthening ties between the two countries.
Q 27Stephen Breyer spent eight years in the Army Reserve during the Vietnam era and left with which rank?
Corporal
Corporal was as high as Breyer rose; his eight years included six months of active duty in Army intelligence before an honorable discharge in 1965.
Q 28Stephen Breyer's wife, Joanna Hare, the daughter of a British viscount, built a career in which profession?
Psychologist
Psychologist Joanna Hare married Breyer in 1967; her father was the 1st Viscount Blakenham and her grandfather an earl.
Q 29Stephen Breyer was raised in a Reform Jewish family; his daughter Chloe was ordained as what?
An Episcopal priest
An Episcopal priest is what Chloe Breyer became; she is one of three children Stephen and Joanna Breyer raised, alongside Nell and Michael.
Q 30As chief judge of a federal appeals court, Stephen Breyer oversaw the building of a new courthouse in which city?
Boston
Boston got its waterfront federal courthouse in 1999, and Breyer credits the project with sparking his lasting interest in architecture.