Early Life and Education
Breyer was born in San Francisco, the son of Anne A. (née Roberts) and Irving Gerald Breyer, and raised in a middle-class Jewish family. Breyer's father was legal counsel for the San Francisco Board of Education. Both Breyer and his younger brother, Charles, who is a federal district judge, are Eagle Scouts of San Francisco's Troop 14. In 2007, Breyer was honored with the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award by the Boy Scouts of America. In 1955, Breyer graduated from Lowell High School. At Lowell, he was a member of the Lowell Forensic Society and debated regularly in high school debate tournaments, including against future California governor Jerry Brown and future Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe.
Breyer received a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Stanford University, a Bachelor of Arts from Magdalen College at Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar, and a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) from Harvard Law School. Breyer is also fluent in French.
In 1967, he married The Hon. Joanna Freda Hare, a psychologist and member of the British aristocracy (the youngest daughter of John Hare, 1st Viscount Blakenham). The Breyers have three adult children, Chloe (an Episcopal priest, and author of The Close), Nell, and Michael.
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