On the occasion of our 10th Anniversary, our Executive Secretary Steven Hill was honoured to have a conversation with Justice Stephen Breyer.

Stephen Breyer served 28 years as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States, where he was widely regarded as a brilliant, careful, and analytical judge, a consensus builder, a guardian of individual rights, and a fierce protector of a nonpartisan, nonpoliticized judiciary. During his tenure, he was described as the court’s resident intellectual, an optimist with an abiding commitment to social justice and the fundamental role of the judiciary in pursuing it.

He was also one of the court’s most internationally focused judges and not only travelled widely and exchanged frequently with colleagues on other courts around the world, but in 2015 published a book on the importance of understanding how judges in other systems make law and decide cases, especially as the court resolved cases with global implications.

Justice Breyer’s conversation with IIJ Executive Secretary Steven Hill was presented as the keynote address at the February 2024 IIJ 10th Anniversary Symposium entitled “Does the Rule of Law Really Matter to Global Security?” His deep insights and historical references will continue to inspire the IIJ community into its second decade of rule of law programming.