Retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer Will Join Harvard Faculty to Teach Seminars

ERIN SCHAFF/POOL/AFP via Getty Justice Stephen Breyer

Recently retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, is heading back to school and will re-join the law school faculty at Harvard University.

According to a press release, Breyer "will teach seminars and reading groups, continue to write books and produce scholarship, and participate in the intellectual life of the school and in the broader Harvard community."

"I am very pleased to return to Harvard to teach there and to write," Breyer said in a statement released by Harvard. "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."

The announcement marks a homecoming of sorts for Breyer, who taught at Harvard prior to joining the Supreme Court, even working as an administrative law professor after he became a federal appeals court judge in 1980.

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Saul Loeb - Pool/Getty President Joe Biden speaks with Justice Stephen Breyer after delivering the State of the Union in 2022

In the announcement, Harvard dean and law professor John Manning said he was "thrilled to welcome [Breyer] home to Harvard."

"Justice Breyer is a historic jurist and a world-class legal scholar who also has a distinguished history as a member of this faculty," Manning said. "I am thrilled to welcome him home to Harvard Law School. His brilliance, experience, collegiality, openness, and intellectual inquisitiveness will deeply enrich our community and advance our mission of teaching, scholarship, and service."

RELATED: Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's Career in Photos

Breyer relinquished his Supreme Court post in June, after 28 years as an associate justice.

Breyer left academia in 1994, when he was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton. The San Francisco native first established his legal career as a law clerk for Justice Arthur Goldberg. He then went on to serve as a professor at Harvard Law, counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and an appellate judge for nearly 14 years.

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Breyer served in the Supreme Court's liberal minority for nearly three decades, announcing his retirement in January after months of speculation and writing in a letter sent to President Joe Biden, "I have decided to retire from regular active judicial service as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States."

Justice Breyer was succeeded by Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was confirmed by a 53-47 Senate vote in April.