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Reclaiming a Great Judge's Legacy Maine Law Review Volume 46 Number 2 Article 9 June 1994 Reclaiming a Great Judge's Legacy Frank M. Coffin Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.mainelaw.maine.edu/mlr Part of the Judges Commons, Jurisprudence Commons, Legal Biography Commons, Legal Education Commons, Legal History Commons, and the Legal Writing and Research Commons Recommended Citation Frank M. Coffin, Reclaiming a Great Judge's Legacy, 46 Me. L. Rev. 377 (1994). Available at: https://digitalcommons.mainelaw.maine.edu/mlr/vol46/iss2/9 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at University of Maine School of Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Maine Law Review by an authorized editor of University of Maine School of Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BOOK REVIEW RECLAIMING A GREAT JUDGE'S LEGACY LEARNED HAND: THE MAN AND THE JUDGE. By Gerald Gunther,1 with a Foreword by Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994; pp. 818, $35.00) Reviewed by Frank M. Coffin2 In the legal profession a deep sigh of relief is heard over the land. After roughly two decades of incubation, the long awaited biography of the great judge has arrived, Learned Hand. The Man and the Judge, by Stanford Law Professor Gerald Gunther.3 I approach this work with particular relish. As a law clerk to Maine's United States District Judge John D. Clifford, Jr., I accom- panied him in February of 1949 to the federal courthouse in Foley Square in New York City, where he was assigned to hear admiralty cases. My judge had immense eyebrows. As we entered an elevator, we joined Judge Learned Hand, whose own cantilevered brows left very little room for me. A silence of awe prevailed during the entire ascent. Much later, in 1965, when, after serving in the Congress and in the executive branch, I was appointed to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, I knew very little about appellate courts, but I did have my role models, Justice Holmes and Judge Hand. Now, after almost thirty years of appellate judging and over ten of chief judging, I have tended the same vineyard as the master vintner and prize this opportunity to become better acquainted with him. It is not that all judges, most lawyers, and a fair proportion of the general citizenry don't have a pretty clear perception of Judge Hand. To the contrary, it is probably safe to say that he is some- what of an icon, only slightly less revered than Uncle Sam and the Statue of Liberty. First, there is the visage-the massive, square, magisterial face, with strong bones and corresponding crags and gul- lies, and, under overhanging shelves of thick eyebrows, eyes reflect- ing emotions from fierce to melancholy to merry. The impression of muscled mass is so graphic that one seldom realizes his height is only five feet and seven inches. Then there is the judge's service, over fifty years, and his age, spanning nine decades. Endurance and survival ineluctably add cubits to a person's stature. Finally, there is the Hand prose-a beguiling freshness and aptness of phrase, words 1. The William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Stanford University Law School 2. Senior Circuit Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. 3. GERALD GuNTHER, LEARNED HAND. THE MAN AND THE JUDGE (1994). MAINE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 46:377 melding perfectly with the thought. This capacity to communicate is part of the icon; it reached its apogee in the judge's 1944 talk to the assembled multitudes in Central Park on "I am an American Day," "The Spirit of Liberty," which became the centerpiece for the widely read collection of Hand's memorable addresses4 assembled by Irving Dilliard and published under the same title. But all of this falls far short of telling us anything about his early life, his outside interests, his real judicial work, his lasting contribu- tions, his character in all its facets, his personal life and aspirations, hobgoblins, and sources of strength. So, after a third of a century, it is time for the profession, indeed all Americans, to try to reclaim the entire heritage of that remarkable human being, Billings Learned Hand. The book, in my opinion, is well worth the wait. Nearly 700 pages, plus a hundred more for footnotes, it nevertheless represents a he- roic condensation of some 100,000 different items on file at Harvard Law School, including no fewer than 50,000 items of correspondence, 1,000 district court opinions, and nearly 3,000 circuit court opinions. The inventory alone requires 500 pages. Literally "generations" of helpers played a part; the author lists 36 research assistants. This is an "authorized" biography. The author had full access to materials and to the Learned Hand family, i.e., children, in-laws, and grandchildren. And although there are specialized studies and col- lections of materials honoring Judge Hand, there is no other work that pretends to be a full scale biography. This one, therefore, comes under the best auspices-a gifted law professor, former clerk, and recognized authority on constitutional law, with the blessing and cooperation of the family. The work evi- dences thoughtful organization and painstaking efforts. The author takes us from Hand's early days in Albany, in the shadow of Learned's formidable father, to law school, then to practice in Al- bany and New York City, then to his district judgeship, his ascen- dancy to the Second Circuit, with detours to politics and other ex- ternal interests, revealing correspondence with other luminaries on some of the great issues of the times, near missed appointments to the Supreme Court, and a gathering public acclaim in his golden years. Justice Powell concludes his Foreword to this book with these words: "'The spirit of liberty,' [Hand] said, 'is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.' This biography gives us for the first time a complete view of the public and private life that Hand built around this philosophy."' I think that the reader would feel that this statement is more true of Judge Hand's public life than of his 4. THE SPIRIT OF LIBERTY: PAPERS AND ADDRESSES OF LEARNED HAND 189, (Irving Dilliard, ed., 2d ed. 1953). 5. GUNTHER, supra note 3, at xiii-xiv. 1994] LEARNED HAND private life. Indeed, Justice Powell earlier hints at this, when he writes, "This biography of course makes clear that the importance of Hand's life is not to be found in amusing anecdotes. His fame and his place in history rest largely on his approach to the task of judg- ing and on his perception of the judicial role in American govern- ment." This review will discuss later the extent to which the biogra- phy of a public person should include revelations of his private life, what we know about Learned Hand's life off the bench, and what we would like to know. AN IMPROBABLE BEGINNING Early Years. One of the fresh revelations of the biography is that the first thirty years of Learned Hand's life gave little evidence of the unique talents that were later to be so celebrated. Holding his lawyer father Samuel in awe, with his rather dominating mother al- ways reinforcing the "image of parental perfection,'" young Learned had a fairly grim time, always feeling the pressure to do well, partic- ularly after the death of his father when he was fourteen.6 He was poor at sports and even during the latter part of his ten year stint at Albany Academy confessed to a sense of "being scared."' His only joyous times were summer rambles in Elizabethtown with his slightly older cousin Gus-Augustus Noble Hand, later Learned's valued Second Circuit colleague.10 Harvard College. After graduation from Albany Academy, Hand entered Harvard College. For a while he trod a pedestrian path. He later described himself as a "frank barbarian from a small New York town," and at the time described the student body as "a pretty snobbish lot.""1 He quickly struck out on the fancy club circuit; al- though he was one of eighty (out of three hundred) chosen for the pool of club eligibles, he was not very high up on the list, and did not make the second "cut," much less the final prized bid from the Porcellian.1 2 He followed up this inauspicious beginning by an un- successful glee club try-out, an equally futile attempt to make the football team and then the crew. He had to settle for being a substi- tute on the crew. But he soon gave this up, fearing it interfered with his studies.18 It would be an overstatement to say that young Learned had a mediocre college career. Any tendency to suggest this can be attrib- 6. Id. at xi-xii. 7. Id. at 6-9. S. Id. at 22-23. 9. Id. at 20. 10. Id. at 21. 11. Id. at 26. 12. Id. at 27. 13. Id. at 29-30. MAINE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 46:377 uted to the exaggerated expectations which, with the benefit of hindsight, we entertain retroactively for the young Hand. Things did get better. He was at long last accepted into membership by the Hasty Pudding Club and made his maiden appearance in Harvard theatrics as a chorus girl sporting a blonde wig.14 Then he became president of the Harvard Advocate, a lesser campus publication; even this, however, he soon abandoned, for fear of interference with studies.
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