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Date April 16, 2025
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On semantics and snails: Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer visits Brown

This year’s Noah Krieger ’93 Memorial Lecture featured Justice Stephen Breyer, who discussed his time on the nation’s highest court and his pragmatic approach to the law.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — To understand what it means to be an appeals court judge, retired U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer told a story he once read of a French biology professor riding on a train with a basket full of snails. 

The conductor asked the passenger if he had a ticket for his snails, because the fare book said all animals need a ticket. But is a snail an animal? If so, is it the kind of animal intended by the fare book? Does the passenger need a ticket for every snail in the basket?

“Now you understand what we do in court,” Breyer told a packed auditorium at Brown University on Tuesday, April 15. “But maybe the words are different. Maybe [it’s] freedom of speech or the right to bear arms. What does it mean? Where does it apply? What’s the scope? 

“It’s not easy.”

For the annual Noah Krieger ’93 Memorial Lecture, Breyer, who sat on the Supreme Court from 1994 to 2022, sat down for a wide-ranging discussion with Brown alumnus and Yale Law School professor Justin Driver. He discussed his pragmatic approach to the law, the importance of listening to others when deciding a case, and the importance of the rule of law. 

The Krieger Lecture, which has previously featured a variety of speakers including Sen. Angus King and U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power, is presented by the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy at Brown’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

I say language isn’t the whole story. Purposes help. Values help. Consequences help.

Stephen Breyer retired U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice
 
Image of Justice Breyer holding up a copy of the U.S. Constitution

During his time on the Supreme Court, Breyer said that there was an unwritten rule that was critical to helping justices make progress while deliberating difficult and complex matters of law. 

“Nobody speaks twice until everybody has spoken once,” Breyer said. “It’s a very good rule for any small group. You have to listen to what other people are saying and see if you can work with that.”

That rule, he said, helped the justices to stay civil even in the face of sometimes fierce differences of opinion. Breyer, for example, remained good friends with fellow justice Antonin Scalia, even though the two had fundamentally different approaches to the law, he said. 

Scalia was famously a constitutional originalist. As Breyer described it, Scalia interpreted the law based on how “ordinary people who were part of the political process at the time the law was written” would have understood the law’s wording. But words, Breyer pointed out, can have complex meaning. They can be abstract and imprecise. 

“I say language isn’t the whole story,” Breyer said. “Purposes help. Values help. Consequences help.” 

What’s more, Breyer said, resting one’s interpretation of the law on people who were engaged in the political system at the founding of the republic can be problematic. For example, when thinking about the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that overturned abortion protection in the United States, Breyer, who dissented in that decision, pointed out there was a key group missing from the political system at the time the 14th Amendment was written in the 1860s. 

“One of the groups that was missing starts with a ‘W’ and ends with an ‘N’ and has five letters,” he said, referring to women. “Do they count?”

Breyer and Driver concluded their conversation with a discussion about the rule of law. Breyer discussed Albert Camus’ novel, “The Plague,” which Breyer interprets as an allegory for the rise of Nazism in Germany. 

“The plague germ never dies,” Breyer said. “It goes into remission. It lurks in the attic. It lurks in the hallways. It lurks in the file cabinets. And one day…it will reemerge. The rule of law is one of the weapons…humans have created in order to keep that rat in its home, so that it cannot re-emerge.”

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