Legal Biography Commons^™

To Herbert Wechsler With Grateful Appreciation, Michael I. Sovern

Faculty Scholarship

Though the invitation to join this symposium came to me in my official capacity, I prefer to write in personal terms. I make that choice for two reasons. First, I cannot improve on the Faculty's own affectionate resolution of appreciation, and so I am happy to embrace it as the School's official position. (I alone on the Faculty could not vote for it: only a tie gives me the franchise and, try as I might, I could not suborn any contrary votes.) Second, my feelings for Herb Wechsler owe far more to my days as his student and my years …

Justice Tobriner: Portrait Of The Judge As An Artist, Joseph R. Grodin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Homer Of The Pacific: Melville's Art And The Ambiguities Of Judging Evil, Lee C. Bollinger

Faculty Scholarship

It should not be surprising that Herman. Melville has an important message for students of the legal system, when one reflects for a moment on his biography and the subject matter of his writings. Melville had an intimate exposure to various legal systems ranging from the very crude to the more sophisticated, due in part at least to close personal ties with people who. were themselves connected with the law in one way or another. When Melville was thirteen years old his father declared himself bankrupt, then went mad and died. Melville's cousin had presided over a widely publicized and …

Monrad Paulsen: An Affectionate Appreciation, Michael I. Sovern

Faculty Scholarship

I have been an admirer of Monrad Paulsen since my first days as his junior colleague at the University of Minnesota Law School back in 1955. In retrospect, I recognize that my view of what makes a great law professor was profoundly influenced by the qualities I saw, and respected, in Monrad. For me, they began with collegiality – a personal interest in and a professional commitment to the welfare of the new boy. That first year at Minnesota was an enormously happy and productive apprenticeship for me, and Monrad helped make it so.

Walter Gellhorn, Michael I. Sovern

Faculty Scholarship

Walter Gellhorn is irreplaceable. To be sure, in every generation there will be a few scholars who are his peer. In a strong teaching faculty like Columbia's, there will always be some who teach as well as he. The republic is occasionally blessed with public servants who give themselves with the sort of selfless devotion that Walter Gellhorn brings to every task. Each of us can count on a handful of good friends like him for moral support, good advice and uncritical love. But I know of no one who has served an institution so loyally and so effectively with …

Mr. Justice Douglas, Michael I. Sovern

Faculty Scholarship

The American people are always interested in record-breakers, whether it be in the field of sports, politics, economics or any other phase of American life. In sports, it might be a Babe Ruth or a Hank Aaron; in politics, a Lincoln or a Roosevelt; in economics, a Rockefeller or a Ford.

And so it is in the judiciary, whether it be a Marshall, Hughes, Holmes or Brandeis. Most of their records in some respects are related to longevity, but the thrust of our admiration stems not from that fact but from some great contribution to the affairs of their day. …

Book Review, George C. Christie

Faculty Scholarship

Reviewing William Twining, Karl Llwellyn and the Realist Movement (1973)

Julius Goebel, Jr.: In Fond Recollection, Michael I. Sovern

Faculty Scholarship

Memorable teachers, like great delicacies, are not to everybody's taste. Most of us endured nineteen years of formal education, encountering perhaps 100 teachers along the way. Many were journeymen, imparting whatever information their particular slice of the curriculum warranted. A few, a very few, truly moved our minds. And, not uncommonly, the genius who made me see left others in the dark, while my friend's cicerone left me hopelessly lost. The teacher who dares to inspire will not inspire many, but if in every class a few are enabled to think in a way they could not think before, that …

Professor Milton Handler, Michael I. Sovern

Faculty Scholarship

Milton Handler taught his first class at Columbia four years before I was born. Because of my parents' tardiness, he was beginning his twenty-sixth year on the Faculty by the time I was old enough to register for his course in Trade Regulation in the fall of 1953. I have been an admirer of Milton Handler ever since.

It has been my good fortune to know him in many ways. As a teacher, he was truly extraordinary – a penetrating analyst, a builder of grand syntheses, a master of the Socratic method. Though his courses were usually electives, most of …

Professor Paul R. Hays, Michael I. Sovern

Faculty Scholarship

When I learned that the Editors of the Columbia Law Review were planning to dedicate this issue to Paul Hays, I took an extraordinary step. I volunteered. It seemed to me that the occasion should not pass without a formal expression of thanks from the Dean of the School of Law and an informal acknowledgment of the personal debt I owe to Paul Hays.

The formal thanks, richly deserved, can be simply stated. A valued colleague, a brilliant scholar, an inspiring teacher – Paul Hays is all of these and the School he served for more than three decades is …

Chief Judge Stanley H. Fuld, Michael I. Sovern

Faculty Scholarship

There were Whiz Kids before McNamara, and never more than during the tenure of the late Thomas E. Dewey as District Attorney of New York County. Only thirty-three years old when he became special prosecutor for the investigation of organized crime in New York and thirty-five when he took office as District Attorney in 1937, Dewey surrounded himself with a remarkably talented group of young lawyers. Frank Hogan, for example, was thirty-five in 1937, Charles Breitel all of twenty-eight. Stanley Howells Fuld, who had graduated from the Columbia Law School one year after the District Attorney, was thirty-four. Nine years …

Dean William C. Warren, Michael I. Sovern

Faculty Scholarship

It would be virtually impossible, even if I were to preempt this entire issue of the Columbia Law Review for the purpose, to document fully the monumental contributions William C. Warren made to the Law School during the seventeen years of his deanship. I can hope only to touch lightly upon them, leaving the reader to admire the foresight, the energy, the generosity of spirit, and the long hours of dedicated effort which enabled him to accomplish so much.