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Read the Transcript (PDF: 471 NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW – INSTITUTE OF JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION (IJA) Oral History of Distinguished American Judges NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW – INSTITUTE OF JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION (IJA) Oral History of Distinguished American Judges HON. FRANK H. EASTERBROOK U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit An Interview with Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, Professor of Law, Georgetown Law August 13, 2019 All rights in this oral history interview belong to New York University. Quoting or excerpting of this oral history interview is permitted as long as the quotation or excerpt is limited to fair use as defined by law. For quotations, excerpts or other uses that exceed fair use, permission must be obtained from the Institute of Judicial Administration (IJA) at, Wilf Hall, 139 Macdougal Street, Room 420, New York 10012, or o [email protected], and should identify the specific passages to be quoted, intended use, and identification of the user. Any permission granted will comply with agreements made with the interviewees and/or interviewers who participated in this oral history. All permitted uses must cite and give proper credit to: IJA Oral History of Distinguished American Judges, Institute of Judicial Administration, NYU School of Law, Judge Frank H. Easterbrook: An Interview with Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, August 13, 2019. *The transcript shall control over the video for any permitted use in accordance with the above paragraph. Any differences in the transcript from the video reflect post-interview clarifications made by the participants and IJA. The footnotes were added by IJA solely for the reader’s information; no representation is made as to the accuracy or completeness of any of such footnotes. Transcribed by Ubiqus NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW – INSTITUTE OF JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION (IJA) Oral History of Distinguished American Judges www.ubiqus.com [START RECORDING] PROF. NICHOLAS ROSENKRANZ: Good 00:00:24 morning. My name is Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz and I’m a law professor at Georgetown. We are here in the chambers of Judge Frank H. Easterbrook of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. It was my great honor to clerk for Judge Easterbrook in 1999-2000, and it is my great honor to interview him today on behalf of the Institute of Judicial 00:00:53 Administration of NYU School of Law. I’ll just say: I’ve had the privilege to work with many brilliant lawyers and judges in my career, and Judge Easterbrook’s mind is the finest legal mind I have ever known. Judge, it’s an honor and a pleasure to be with you. JUDGE FRANK H. EASTERBROOK: And a pleasure to be with you, Nick. 00:01:17 PROF. ROSENKRANZ: I still remember NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW – INSTITUTE OF JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION (IJA) Oral History of Distinguished American Judges the two of us walking down the street here in Chicago 20 years ago -- me, bundled up in my warmest winter coat, and you, wearing just a sports 00:01:28 jacket. And I said: ”What are you doing? It’s freezing!” And you said: “This is nothing; I’m from Buffalo.” Could you tell us a bit about what it was like growing up in Buffalo? JUDGE EASTERBROOK: Well, Buffalo did tend to be a little chilly and a little windy, but I had the great benefit of growing up in a family where both parents were intellectuals. They loved thoughts, and they made sure I went to a good public school (public in the US 00:02:04 sense) in the nearest northern suburb of Buffalo. A place called Kenmore. The Kenmore schools were staffed by very intelligent people, a lot of whom had PhDs, and it offered a wonderful education. It was a place where, for example, my last six years there I NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW – INSTITUTE OF JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION (IJA) Oral History of Distinguished American Judges 00:02:24 took Latin for six years running and managed to learn a whole lot of English in the process. That’s one reason, I think, why I care more about words, having worked through how we 00:02:37 got to where we are in words. It was a lot of fun, so it was a wonderful place to grow up provided you liked snow. Buffalo, by the way, is of the view that it doesn’t get very much snow. There’s a place to the south of Buffalo that gets twice as much. The people who live in Buffalo call 00:02:57 that the Snow Belt. [Laughter] PROF. ROSENKRANZ: You talked a bit about your love of, and facility with, language. All three Easterbrook brothers are extremely accomplished and extremely facile with language. JUDGE EASTERBROOK: Mm-hm. PROF. ROSENKRANZ: How did that come to be? JUDGE EASTERBROOK: Well, I think it NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW – INSTITUTE OF JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION (IJA) Oral History of Distinguished American Judges was our upbringing. Again, our parents really cared about words. I 00:03:20 think our mother cared about words more than our father. My mother says that by the time I was two, she had read all of Shakespeare to me. I must say, I don’t remember it. 00:03:31 [Laughter] In fact, I’m not sure I remember the Shakespeare plays I read 10 years ago. But words were very important in our family and all of us got drawn into this. My next younger brother Gregg became a journalist, wrote some things on spec for publications, and wrote books, and is, of course, still doing that.1 And then he took the sideline of writing the “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” column.2 Neil, the youngest brother, 00:04:03 we refer to as the black sheep of the family, because he went into, and is 1 https://www.greggeasterbrook.com/books.html 2 "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" or “TMQ” was a football column written by Gregg Easterbrook. NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW – INSTITUTE OF JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION (IJA) Oral History of Distinguished American Judges a professor of, English literature. [Laughter] Well, at the time he did that, the only association you would belong to was the Modern Language Association, which mostly scoffed at everything they were teaching and was 00:04:25 interested in Shakespeare only to the extent it would reflect on modern sexual trends. There has been another association of language teachers formed, but Neil quickly 00:04:38 learned that he wasn’t going to be able to get tenure just teaching his real love, which was 20th century American existential thought. There weren’t that many people who wanted to sign up for PhD programs in that, so he took a sidelight: He teaches science fiction. His science fiction 00:04:57 classes are oversubscribed, and every year he wins best teacher awards. [Laughter] PROF. ROSENKRANZ: I had a look at his list of courses which is simply astonishing. So, why did you choose NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW – INSTITUTE OF JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION (IJA) Oral History of Distinguished American Judges Swarthmore and how did that come to pass? JUDGE EASTERBROOK: Swarthmore had, deservedly, a wonderful reputation as an intellectually intense school. It has a beautiful campus. At the time I 00:05:26 went there, there were about 250 people in each class. You would go to this place southwest of Philadelphia and just spend time thinking and interacting with your 00:05:39 teachers and with fellow students. I mean I thought that was a wonderful model, and, after I went there for a while, I was sure it was a wonderful model. You spent your time, when you weren’t in class, reading, talking to other students about what you were reading, about what you were thinking. You know, there were the odd occasions 00:06:01 where you went out on the lawn and threw a Frisbee as hard as you possibly could or took a knife to see how close you could get it to your NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW – INSTITUTE OF JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION (IJA) Oral History of Distinguished American Judges foot without going through your toe. [Laughter] Those were the other attractions at Swarthmore, but it was the intellectual attractions that were important. And when I left Swarthmore and came to law school, everybody around me was saying: “Oh, 00:06:28 it’s so hard; there’s so much reading.” And I was saying: “Hard? Reading? This is the life of Riley compared to Swarthmore.” It was just a wonderful experience. The last two years in 00:06:40 Swarthmore, I was in, what they call, the Honor’s Program, which is just seminars. In those seminars, you do a paper every other week, and the subject of the seminar is the discussion of those papers. So, the students are discussing each other’s work. There are no exams. There are 00:06:59 no grades. But, then, at the end of your senior year, they bring in outside examiners, something along the English model. The outside NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW – INSTITUTE OF JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION (IJA) Oral History of Distinguished American Judges examiner is told the title of the seminar and told that they can ask you anything about that subject matter. [Laughter] Well, that induces people to prepare, which we did. It was a lot of fun. PROF. ROSENKRANZ: What were some of your favorite classes and professors 00:07:27 from that time? JUDGE EASTERBROOK: Well, one of my favorites was the seminar called Public Law and Jurisprudence, given by Professor J.
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