After 20 years, Breyer is high court's raging pragmatist

When Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer gathered scores of former law clerks for a reunion to celebrate his two decades on the bench, he was toasted as an undying believer in the U.S. system of government.

Whether Breyer, who marks his 20th anniversary on the high court this week, was in the majority or dissenting from the conservative court's decisions, "he was always optimistic," recalled Michael Leiter, who clerked for Breyer and is former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. "He brought a level of optimism about the positive change...