Law Commons^™

Boris I. Bittker, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

I first met Boris Bittker on January 21, 1977, in Miami. There are only a handful of people whom you remember first meeting. For me, Boris was one. For the past twenty or so years, I have been lucky enough to count him as a friend. He was always Boris to me, never Borie. I was a new friend – too much his junior to be so informal. Our phone would ring. "Mike, it's Borie," he would say. "Hello Boris!" I would respond.

The conference where Boris and I met was a gathering of about thirty tax law professors and …

For Eugene Rostow, Philip Chase Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

The two-handed saw is a foresters’ instrument that two men use, one at each end, sawing in reciprocating rhythm. The blade of the best two-handed saws balances a sharpened stiffness with a shimmering flexion; its use requires individual strength and skill at cooperation. Because Gene Rostow too combined these opposing qualities – indeed had them in abundance – it is especially noteworthy that one day, using such a saw as a young man in New England, he severely injured his back, keeping him out of active service in World War II and causing recurrent difficulties throughout his gallant life.

Was …

For My Friend, Philip Chase Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

Auden wrote somewhere that a friend is simply someone of whom, in his absence, one thinks with pleasure. How do we measure that against Dante’s famous observation that there is no greater pain than to remember happy days in days of sorrow? They are both right, are they not? I cannot think of my first memory of Charles without smiling even though all afternoon my throat has ached with the strain of suppressed anguish at the loss of him. “Memory is all that the death of such a man leaves us.”