SCOTUS Younger Brother Presides Over VW Case

Charles R. Breyer, the federal judge who is presiding over the trial against Volkswagen for cheating on emissions tests, is the younger brother of Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, and was once an aspiring actor. In a New York Times profile, Breyer the younger says he initially went to Broadway after graduating from Harvard, to pursue theatrics. “I never got a callback,” he said, so he opted to go to law school at the University of California, Berkeley, where he found trial law—“theatrics by another name.” Breyer was a trial lawyer in private practice until Bill Clinton appointed him to the federal bench in 1997. Now Breyer is overseeing a massive class-action lawsuit against the German automaker that involves thousands of car owners, and civil suits brought by car dealers and the Justice Department.