Justice Breyer s Remarks at the 2015 Jorde Symposium September 24, 2015

When the author hears the words "interdependent," "globalization," "a shrinking world," he thinks they range between cliches on the one hand and buzzwords on the other -- but they aren't quite concrete. He thought it might be helpful to write very concretely about what these words mean in terms of the life of a Supreme Court justice. When he looks back and compare twenty years ago to today, he thinks they have many more cases where those words concretely make a big difference. He has listed four or five categories of cases and discussed them in an effort to try to focus on what problems they raise now. He can give you a few examples. One of them that is of interest to people is a traditional problem that goes back thousands of years: they have security needs. More and more people found that they could fit their cases into statute because there are human rights abuses throughout the world.