Learned Hand's Reflections On His Professors
In 1958, the great Judge Learned Hand ended a series of lectures at Harvard Law School by reflecting on his professors when he was a law student there in the 1890s. It remains my favorite passage about law professors, and a vision for us in the profession to aspire to meet. Judge Hand wrote:
More years ago than I like now to remember I sat in this building and listened to — yes, more than that, was dissected by — men all but one of whom are now dead. What I got from them was not alone the Rule in Shelley’s case, or what was one’s duty to an invited person — as we then called him — or what law determined whether a contract has been made, or how inadequate was the common law of partnership before the advent of Cory on Accounts, or in what jurisdictions a corporation is “present.” True, I did get those so far as I was able to absorb them, but I got much more. I carried away the impress of a band of devoted scholars; patient, considerate, courteous and kindly, whom nothing could daunt and nothing could bribe. The memory of those men has been with me ever since. Again and again they have helped me when the labor seemed heavy, the task seemed trivial, and the confusion seemed indecipherable. From them I learned that it is as craftsmen that we get our satisfactions and our pay. In the universe of truth they lived by the sword; they asked no quarter of absolutes and they gave none. Go ye and do likewise.
So, so good.
My understanding is that Learned Hand had taken classes from a bunch of professors who are still well known names in the law: Christopher Columbus Langdell, James Barr Ames, John Chipman Gray, James Bradley Thayer, and Samuel Williston among them. His former professor who was still alive at the time of Hand’s lecture was Williston, who died in 1963 at the age of 101. Judge Hand himself passed in 1961, at the age of 89.
The post Learned Hand’s Reflections On His Professors appeared first on Reason.com.
Source: https://reason.com/volokh/2026/08/31/learned-hands-reflections-on-his-professors/
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