We experienced a Breyer page–where Justice Breyer speaks uninterrupted for an entire page–in Zivotofsky v. Kerry. This Breyer page stretched across three pages, for a total of 27 lines. Note that there is not a single question, let alone a question mark, anywhere in the Breyer page.
See previous Breyer pages in EPA v. EME Homer, Medtronic v. Boston Scientific Corp (32 lines), and Bond v. United States (38 lines).
While Justice Breyer has been known to monopolize oral arguments, by asking questions (if you can call them questions) that span an entire page (or more) in the transcript. I call these Breyer Pages. I didn’t think it would be possible to find a Breyer Page in an opinion. But Noel Canning happened.
Enter page 54 of Justice Breyer’s majority opinion in NLRB v. Noel Canning, which is ALL FOOTNOTES. The ultimate Breyer Page.
Here are the oral arguments in Koontz visualized. See how long Breyer talks uninterrupted.
@JoshMBlackman Wonder if you could do some damage with something like this? Visualization of speech in Koontz arg. pic.twitter.com/fzwJZtIdsn
— Patrick Ellis (@Sparty_Legal) April 11, 2014
H/T Patrick Ellis
From oral argument in EPA v. EME Homer City Generation, L.P., we have a near-Breyer page, accentuated by his own joke.
JUSTICE BREYER: Why is it wrong? That is, I focused on your argument here in the briefs, which is very clear and very good. And — and the example that comes to my mind is we have an overgrazing problem in State A. All right? It’s caused because cows come in from State B and sheep come in from State C. The cow men and the sheep men are in different States. They’re not friends. (Laughter.)
But in conjunction with the next page, we have 35 lines of uninterrupted SGB. Poor Peter Keisler (who I’m sure watched today’s Senate Confirmation vote), began his response, “I’ll try to respond to that–that fully, Justice Breyer.”
In Medtronic Inc. v. Boston Scientific Corp., we had another Breyer Page. This one only went on 32 lines (it spilled over to the next page). The Breyer Page in Bond was 38 lines.
And, after a lengthy hypo, Breyer seemed to sense the lawyer lost him. Hilarity ensued:
JUSTICE BREYER: You could have brought — are you following me?
MR. NEUSTADT: No, I’m afraid not.
JUSTICE BREYER: Okay. Skip it. (Laughter.)
H/T Greg Dolin