Summer 2006 arthur liman program Public Interest Newsletter Liman Program Hosts Annual Colloquium and Joins in Dedicating the Portrait of the Honorable Stephen R. Reinhardt On March 30-31, 2006, the Liman Program held its annual public interest law colloquium, gathering together advocates, scholars, practitioners, and students as they discussed organizing, both locally and globally, on behalf of individual clients and communities. The Colloquium began on Thursday evening, March 30th, with the unveiling of the portrait of the Honorable Stephen R. Reinhardt, YLS ’54, who sits on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. As Judge Reinhardt’s family, friends, former clerks, and colleagues celebrated the occasion, many noted the striking symmetry between the careers and commitments of Judge Reinhardt and of Arthur Liman. The parallels were mapped at the outset by Kenji Yoshino, Deputy Dean of Yale Law School, and in closing by Judith Resnik, Arthur Liman Professor of Law and founding director of the Liman Program. Opening Remarks Supreme Court, but the number of Muses focus on four similarities—their birth on Mount Helicon. This suggested to me and education, their experience in private that each Justice could be paired with a practice, their commitment to public muse. I started well. It is easy to find the service, and their legacies. muse of history and the muse of tragedy Arthur Liman was born on November on the Court. Until recently, the muse 5, 1932, in New York City, one year after of dance had an avatar in the aerobic Stephen Reinhardt was born in the same Justice O’Connor. It is even possible to city. Liman received his B.A. from Harvard find a muse of sacred hymns, if we count in 1954, and his J.D. from Yale in 1957. advocates of the pledge of allegiance (as Judge Reinhardt received his B.A. from I do). But when we look for a muse of Pomona in 1951, and received his J.D. erotic poetry, all invention gives out, the from Yale in 1954. Were it not for Judge imagination is beggared, and the pretty Reinhardt’s precocity in graduating from conceit must be surrendered. college at twenty, they would have walked On reconsideration, I decided instead the halls of this law school at the same to pair the two individuals we honor time. today—Arthur Liman, and Judge Stephen After completing their education, Reinhardt. Besides the critical, and we Liman and Judge Reinhardt spent many Deputy Dean Kenji Yoshino hope enduring, difference that one of years in private practice. Upon graduation these individuals is here only in spirit from Yale Law School, Liman joined the Good morning. It is my great honor to while the other is with us in person, New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, offer some opening remarks for the Ninth these two share a great deal. I wanted to continued on page 2 Annual Arthur Liman Colloquium. It is also my great pleasure, for I have always The Arthur Liman Public Interest Program Newsletter is published by: felt a kinship with the Liman Fellows. I started teaching at Yale Law School in 1997-98, when the first class of Fellows The Arthur Liman Public Interest Program Judith Resnik strode out into the world. We have grown Yale Law School Arthur Liman Professor of Law up side by side, and it is with delight and P.O. Box 208215 and Founding Director New Haven, CT 06520-8215 amazement that I acknowledge our ninth http://www.law.yale.edu/liman/ Marilyn Cassella year together. Senior Administrative Assistant So I decided to focus these remarks on Deborah Cantrell Phone: 203.432.7740 pairing, on how people can be mutually Arthur Liman Program Director E-mail: [email protected] ennobled by growing up and old with Phone: 203.432.2230 each other. I was going to riff off the Fax: 203.432.4876 All photos by Harold Shapiro number nine, because it is not only the E-mail: [email protected] number of Justices on the United States 2 annual colloquium continued summer 2006 Wharton, & Garrison, where he rocketed with his biography shows that his event planned by the Fellows to collect to partnership. He won a major corporate passion for public service was not ignited and advance cutting-edge work in public case in 1985, representing Pennzoil but revealed when he ascended to that interest law. against Texaco as the two oil titans vied position. Judge Reinhardt has also left his for control of Getty. Throughout the Judge Reinhardt’s crusade for justice ageless mark. Yesterday, we unveiled a 1980s, he worked in white-collar crime, is also of national renown. Nominated portrait of the Judge with the awe and joy representing clients like junk-bond mogul by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, he that attend a graduate’s ascension to the Michael Milken. received his commission to the Ninth pantheon of the profession’s immortals. Judge Reinhardt took longer to enter Circuit Court of Appeals on September As a lover of the Harry Potter books, private practice. After Yale Law School, 11, 1980. For the past quarter century, I’ve always hoped that if I looked closely he served in the United States Air Force he has been an unmoved mover—the enough at the portraits that range the for two years and clerked for Judge unembarrassed and indefatigable walls, I would be able to catch their figures Luther Youngdahl on the District Court champion of the left. He has penned moving. In the future, I will be keeping for the D.C. Circuit. In 1957, however, so many influential opinions that it is the closest eye on Judge Reinhardt’s he too went into private practice, briefly impossible for an outsider to choose image, as I cannot imagine that even a for O’Melveny and Myers and then as a among them. Happily, in a recent painter could keep him still. But perhaps named partner in Fogel, Julber, Reinhardt, interview, he listed his favorites. These the Judge will choose to move instead Rothschild & Feldman, where he worked include an en banc opinion striking through the living legacy of his clerks and for two decades. down a state ban on physician-assisted protégés. When asked to describe the best The experience of both men in private suicide, another en banc opinion striking part of his job, Judge Reinhardt once said practice usefully erodes the traditional down a provision of a state constitution it included spending “most of his working distinction between private and public that prohibited state officials from using hours”—which he described as “most law. Today, most of us associate the any language other than English, an of his waking hours”—with “extremely names Liman and Reinhardt with public opinion holding that district courts have bright, young, enthusiastic law clerks who service. Yet it is hard not to attribute the jurisdiction to hear habeas petitions filed then go on to make their own significant trademark pragmatism through which by detainees on Guantanamo Bay, and a contributions to the law and the nation.” they realized their ideals in the public dissent opining that execution by hanging T0day’s Colloquium is literally spangled sector to their years in the private one. was “cruel and unusual” punishment. with those former clerks, as it sets their The third similarity between these two The fourth and final similarity between names off with asterisks. They populate individuals is their profound commitment Liman and Judge Reinhardt is the legacy every panel with distinction, as the group to the public good. While at Paul Weiss, they have bequeathed to us. Through the they represent populates the nation. Liman was the President of the Legal Liman Program, five or more Yale Law So today we celebrate a pair of Aid Society of New York, the President School graduates can work on year-long individuals who have shown us what it of the Neighborhood Defender Services projects under the aegis of public-interest means to live greatly within the law. They of Harlem, the Chair of the Legal Action organizations. Having supported many show us that this life is paradoxical, in Center in New York City, and the Chair students for the Liman Fellowship, I can that one becomes a giant not through self- of the New York State Capital Defender’s testify that the recipients are consistently aggrandizement, but through attention to Office. While some private lawyers just the most hard-headed and soft-hearted the weak, the unseen, and the inaudible. collect such titles, Liman distinguished individuals in each class. The Liman Fund Today, more than ever, we need their every distinction he earned. In 1971, he also supports a public-interest reading example. A student recently sent me a served as chief counsel on the New York group that meets weekly at the Law poem that has been an amulet for me state commission investigating the bloody School for discussion among faculty, law since I first read it as a teenager—William Attica prison riot. The commission, students, undergraduates, and interested Butler Yeats’s The Second Coming. I want which determined that the police assault members of the community. As if this to read you the first lines, as they capture had been excessively harsh, published a were not enough, the Liman Foundation, our times, and, unfortunately, her despair: 470-page report that was nominated for in concert with Arthur Liman’s son, the a National Book Award. Many of us first filmmaker Douglas Liman, has ensured Turning and turning in the widening gyre, encountered Liman when he came into that undergraduates from Barnard, The falcon cannot hear the falconer the national spotlight in 1987 as special Brown, Harvard, Princeton, Spelman, Things fall apart, the center cannot hold counsel to the United States Senate and Yale are funded to do public interest Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world committee probing the Iran-Contra work over the summer.