Supreme Court nominee Stephen Breyer has the brain power and persuasive skills to lead the court away from its current conservatism, experts say.
A product of Stanford, Harvard and Oxford who reads French novels in their original text and has hiked the Himalayas, Breyer may take the stodgy court by storm the moment he walks through the bronze doors.
No date is set for confirmation hearings, but Breyer has strong bipartisan support and is expected to breeze through the process this summer.
Just as Justice Antonin Scalia provided the intellectual force behind the court's conservative march, Breyer could be the magnet who steers it back to the left - or at least to the middle.
"In terms of raw brain power, Scalia hasn't met his match, he's met his master," says University of Virginia law professor Daniel Ortiz, a former law clerk for Breyer.
"He clearly has the intellectual gifts and the political gifts to be a consensus builder on this court," University of Pennsylvania law professor Lani Guinier said Sunday on ABC's This Week with David Brinkley.
"If he is imbued with the even more noble purpose of turning the court around, he could be a tremendous intellectual force."
Scalia, along with Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas, have formed a solid conservative bloc on the court on issues of criminal rights, abortion and just about everything else.
With the departure of Harry Blackmun - the man Breyer would replace - the rest of the justices are usually regarded as moderate, with some of them leaning left, others to the right. They rarely reach clear consensus, and Breyer is known for helping do just that.
In former jobs, Breyer built coalitions to deregulate the airline industry, reform criminal sentencing and, most recently, to design a new federal courthouse in Boston.
Breyer, chief judge for the federal appeals court in Boston, threw himself tirelessly into the courthouse project, as he does with all projects.
"He's a whirling dervish who has no trouble handling several jobs at once," says Yale law professor Akhil Amar.
Friends say Breyer can juggle so much because he works with lightning speed and efficiency. On pending cases he is better prepared than his clerks and he writes his own first drafts of opinions - a rarity on the high court.
Breyer recently said he writes his opinions so that "a high school student, if willing to take a little time, would understand that . . . the law, as revealed in that opinion, makes sense."
Serving as a justice will be a homecoming of sorts for Breyer. In 1964 he served as law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg.
From Goldberg, Breyer says, he learned "a highly practical view of the Constitution. He saw the Constitution as protecting basic liberties in a practical way, a way that permitted achieving the ideal without unduly interfering with the workings of government."
That moderate, practical view of the Constitution suggests the main mystery surrounding Breyer. For all his energy and intellect, it is unclear where exactly he would move the court - to the middle or the left.
His voting record on the appeals court has drawn praise and criticism from both sides of legal debates.
Appeals court judges are supposed to follow Supreme Court precedents, so it is sometimes hard to discern the actual views of someone in Breyer's position.
His rulings are sometimes described as dry and passionless, but many friends predict that once on the high court, he will blossom and display Blackmun-like concern for the law's effect on real people.
Breyer seemed to forecast that new emphasis soon after he was named on Friday when he told reporters in Boston, "I believe very deeply . . . in the Constitution and the laws of the United States and the ways in which they touch the lives of ordinary people."
As focused as Breyer is, friends say he makes time for family and pastimes.
Breyer's wife, Joanna, is a psychologist at Boston's renowned Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she works with young cancer patients and their families.
The Breyers have three children - including one, magazine editor Chloe, 25, who already lives in Washington. The other children are Nell, 22, a student at Yale; and Michael, 19, who will attend Stanford this fall.
Breyer's financial disclosure forms indicate the family has assets valued at between $ 3 and $ 5 million. His salary on the high court: $ 164,100.
Breyer loves to cook and picks up ingredients at the same gourmet shops favored by PBS television foodie Julia Child, a fellow Cambridge resident.
Shopowners know him to be a pleasant but sometimes fussy customer.
"He loved our gumbo, and when we tried adding a few things to the recipe, he came in and told us to change it back," says a clerk at The Fishmonger, a shop near his home. Contributing: John Larrabee in Boston
THE BREYER FILE -- Personal: Stephen Gerald Breyer, 55. Married, three children. -- Education: Stanford University. Oxford University. Harvard Law School. -- Experience: 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, judge since 1986; former professor at Harvard Law School; former chief counsel, Senate Judiciary Committee; Former member, U.S. Sentencing Commission; former assistant to Watergate prosecutor.
