Say you're the Brookings Institution and you're hosting the inaugural Justice Stephen Breyer Lecture on International Law. Who might you bring in to speak?

The man himself, of course. (Short of having Robert Brookings—who died in 1932—it's quite a get.) In an engaging talk, Justice Breyer discussed international law and its role at the Supreme Court, with Brookings president Strobe Talbott saying that this may be a preview of the Justice's next book. Breyer recalled being on a panel where a US congressman objected to referencing non-US courts; he wants to figure out what concerns people about that, and speak to them in his book. He concluded: if you want to preserve our American values, we ought to learn about what's going on around us.

Rather like the Supreme Court facing the New Deal, it's coming to grips with a new concept and integrating it. There are several instances in which the Court should have knowledge of international or foreign law, Breyer said. Those include: conflicts of security and civil liberties, human rights cases, interpreting treaties, and copyright law. (They come up in around 10 to 15 cases from a docket of 80, where it used to be two or three.) He finished with a reference to Camus' The Plague. The book's plague is a metaphor for Nazis occupying France, and finishes with a comment that the plague never sleeps, only goes into remission. Breyer says that the rule of law, administered in part through judges and lawyers, is one possible weapon against the day the plague may reemerge.