Former Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court
Stephen G. Breyer was born in San Francisco, California, August 15, 1938. He married Joanna Hare in 1967, and has three children - Chloe, Nell, and Michael. He received an A.B. from Stanford University, a B.A. from Magdalen College, Oxford, and an LL.B. from Harvard Law School. He served as a law clerk to Justice Arthur Goldberg of the Supreme Court of the United States during the 1964 Term, as a Special Assistant to the Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Antitrust, 1965–1967, as an Assistant Special Prosecutor of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, 1973, as Special Counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, 1974–1975, and as Chief Counsel of the committee, 1979–1980. He was an Assistant Professor, Professor of Law, and Lecturer at Harvard Law School, 1967–1994, a Professor at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, 1977–1980, and a Visiting Professor at the College of Law, Sydney, Australia and at the University of Rome. From 1980–1990, he served as a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and as its Chief Judge, 1990–1994. He also served as a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States, 1990–1994, and of the United States Sentencing Commission, 1985–1989. President Clinton nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat August 3, 1994. Justice Breyer retired from the Supreme Court on June 30, 2022.
Chief Legal Correspondent, CBS News
Jan Crawford is CBS News' chief legal correspondent and contributes regularly to the "CBS Evening News," "CBS This Morning," and "Face the Nation," as well as CBS News Radio and CBSNews.com.
Crawford joined CBS News in October 2009. She had been a regular contributor to CBS News in 2005 to 2006.
Crawford is a recognized authority on the Supreme Court whose 2007 book, "Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for the Control of the United States Supreme Court" (Penguin Press), gained critical acclaim and became an instant New York Times Bestseller. She began covering the Court in 1994 for the Chicago Tribune and went on to become a law and political correspondent for all ABC News programs, a Supreme Court analyst for The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer on PBS and a legal analyst for CBS News' "CBS Evening News" and "Face the Nation." She has reported on most of the major judicial appointments and confirmation hearings of the past 15 years and amassed crucial sources in the White House, the Justice Department and Congress along the way.
Chief Justice John Roberts granted his first network television interview to Crawford, just one of the rare interviews she was able to obtain with a total of five of the Court's current members, as well as retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Crawford also sat down with then-86-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens in his first television interview, as well as Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer.
Crawford's in-depth reports on the Bush Administration's legal war on terror and her exclusive reports on controversial interrogation techniques used for terror suspects have received wide acclaim and been credited with being a catalyst for congressional hearings. Washingtonian Magazine named her one of Washington's top journalists.
Crawford began her journalistic career at the Tribune in 1987, joining the legal affairs beat in 1993, after her graduation from the University of Chicago Law School. The newspaper awarded Crawford its highest award in 2001, for her role on a team of reporters covering the presidential election of 2000, and the legal battles over the White House. She won the same prize for her 13-part series on the post-civil rights South, a project that brought her back to her native Alabama.
Crawford graduated from the University of Alabama in 1987. She has taught journalism at American University and frequently speaks about the Court to universities, law schools, legal organizations and civic groups across the country. She is a member of the New York Bar. She and her family live in Washington D.C.
Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court
Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice, was born in Trenton, New Jersey, March 11, 1936. He married Maureen McCarthy and has nine children- Ann Forrest, Eugene, John Francis, Catherine Elisabeth, Mary Clare, Paul David, Matthew, Christopher James, and Margaret Jane. He received his A.B. from Georgetown University and the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and his LL.B. from Harvard Law School, and was a Sheldon Fellow of Harvard University from 1960-1961. He was in private practice in Cleveland, Ohio from 1961-1967, a Professor of Law at the University of Virginia from 1967-1971, and a Professor of Law at the University of Chicago from 1977-1982, and a Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University and Stanford University. He was chairman of the American Bar Association's Section of Administrative Law, 1981-1982, and its Conference of Section Chairmen, 1982-1983. He served the federal government as General Counsel of the Office of Telecommunications Policy from 1971-1972, Chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 1972-1974, and Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel from 1974-1977. He was appointed Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1982. President Reagan nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat September 26, 1986.
Journalist & Legal Expert
Tim O’Brien is an attorney and an award winning journalist whose achievements include covering the U.S. Supreme Court for ABC News for more than twenty-two years. He is a recognized expert on the Court, its Justices and on the development of a generation of constitutional law.
O’Brien’s reporting has received the highest accolades of both the legal and journalism professions. The National Academy of Arts and Sciences awarded Mr. O’Brien an Emmy for his contributions to CNN’s coverage of the September 11thterrorism attacks. His television documentaries on the criminal justice system received the American Bar Association’s highest award (The Silver Gavel Award) as well as a Columbia-DuPont Award for Excellence in journalism. He also received a Columbia-DuPont Award for Human Rights Reporting for “Escape From Justice—Nazi War Criminals in America,” an ABC News documentary.
O’Brien’s reporting on the death penalty and alternative dispute resolution have also been recognized by the American Bar Association for journalism excellence. He is currently a contributing correspondent to the PBS Broadcast, “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.” His opinions on issues ranging from the death penalty to broadcast coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court have appeared on the Op Ed pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major newspapers around the U.S.
O’Brien is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the Bar of the Supreme Court of the U.S. Active in the Washington legal community, he is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a former Director of the American Judicature Society and a current board member of the National Legal Center for the Public Interest.
O’Brien is a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and has held similar positions at Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans (2003, 2005), St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami (2001) and Hofstra University School of Law, Hempstead, NY. (2000)
He is a “Distinguished Alumnus” of Michigan State University and a member of the Board of Visitors of the Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans. A frequent lecturer on the Supreme Court and legal issues generally, he was the keynote speaker at the D.C. Judicial Circuit Conference for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia meeting at Williamsburg, Virginia in 2002. In 2009, he was the keynote speaker for annual meetings of the state bar associations of Michigan and Kentucky.
Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama (Retired); Professor of Law, Belmont University College of Law?
General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, Aristotle International
The Honorable David M. Mason is General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at Aristotle. He assists campaigns, PACs, and political parties in maximizing their effectiveness while complying with federal and state regulatory requirements.
Mr. Mason served as Commissioner and Chairman (2002 and 2008) of the Federal Election Commission from 1998 until 2008, a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed position.
President Reagan appointed Mason as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Legislative Affairs) where he was instrumental in working with Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci and Representative Dick Armey in securing passage of base closing legislation.
Commissioner Mason has testified before Congress over 20 times, addressed international conferences on elections and appeared in or wrote for scores of American print and broadcast media outlets. He is an honors graduate of Claremont McKenna College in Government, graduated with highest honors from Concord Law School and is a member of the California Bar.
A Conversation on the Constitution with Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia
Washington, DCAre Judicial Elections a Threat to Judicial Independence? - Event Audio
Randall T. Shepard, Tim O'Brien, Harold F. See
The Federalist Society's State Courts Project presented this event on October 24, 2006, at the...
The Internet, The First Amendment, and Campaign Finance Regulation
David M. Mason, John K. Abegg
One of the major challenges for the Federal Election Commission (FEC) today is determining how...