Harvard Law School - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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dreds of students might now, as practising lawyers, find that protection of ideas is as exciting a part of the law-game as protection of property. I O 9 Archibald Macleish WHEN a great lawyer is also a great hu- manist it's hard not to write of him as a great man. Zech Chafee wouldn't care for the epithet, but it may well be too late for him to protest. History has glanced at him and history has a way of calling those she looks at by the names that please her. If Zech had stuck to Bills and Notes he would have had his portrait in Langdell and the lively gratitude of generations of Law Students but his Yankee modesty would not have been troubled otherwise. It was when he began to think and then to write and finally to act in defense of the rights of men to be men-of the right of an individual to be an individual-that the first of the muses memorized his name for her chronicles. For he was born-or rather he grew up-into a time in which the defense of the right of an individual to be an individual was a notable, not to say an astonishing thing. People, although they talked about freedom, and made wars for freedom, had ceased to believe in freedom. Particularly the freedom of an individual to be an individual. Free- dom to think as nobody else thought, or as nobody but a very few thought, was con- sidered dangerous if not downright treason- able. People who thought in that way were pinks if they were not actually reds and therefore fair game for any newspaper pub- lisher with the Constitution and his circula- tion to maintain. To say nothing of any politician who wanted to get, or to stay, elected. For a lawyer then, particularly a lawyer who was also a Professor, more par- ticularly a lawyer who was also a Professor at Harvard-for such a man to begin to think and to talk and to act in defense of the right of an individual to be an individual was to ask for trouble and therefore, con- sidering the quarter from which the trouble threatened, to ask for fame. Zech has, of course, other claims. He is not only the prin- cipal defender of the freedom of the human mind in this country-which means, things being what they are, in the world. He is also a man who cares about the human mind- about what comes out of it-about its ca- pacity, its inventiveness, its forms, its reasons, its aspirations, its fantasies. Which is another way of saying that he is a civilized man in a time when not many men are eivilized.- I don,t know how you can add Zech Chafee up-sound scholar, lucid writer, devoted cit- izen, cherished friend, courageous man- without using the adjective which will em- barrass him. If he is not, quite simply, a great American then words have lost their mean- ing. Page seven

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down from che tops of our culture even to the level of the police courts and the lower reaches of magistracy. At the top levels of our culture he made a contribution com- parable to that of Roger Baldwin in the operational field. I would be less than frank, however, if I did not add that Chafee has had an amusing blind spot when appraising the alleged need of societal protection against obscenity. Judge Cardozo-it la Chafee-could not be scared by revolutionary writings but in ascetic fashion shied off from ideas touch- ing on sex. On the other hand, Judge Wool- sey gayly allowed Joyce's Ulysses free circulation, but with sternness plus fear slapped down a meager impotent magazine talking revolution in general terms. These varying areas of timidity in the human race, even among the bravest, have always amused me. Chafee amuses me greatly. But this is only a minor blind spot, it seems to me, in comparison to the great contri- bution made single-handed by Chafee. In all frankness I have, in an inverted sense, a much more severe criticism. Why did he never teach at the Law School the subject matter of his great contribution to the law and our folkway? Can't we even now get this bender of our folkways to teach at his Law School the problems of The First Free- dom, which he now teaches at Harvard College. Our gamble that truth wins out in conflict of thought should long ago have had Page six a position of importance for future legal luminaries, at least as important as the study of negotiable instruments , one of the professor's pets. The negotiability of ideas -man's most precious commodity-touches on more than an act of faith, particularly in this era of expanding quantity and quality of negotiation of ideas. Why can't we get Chafee to start a course dealing with the printing press, the silver screen and the ether waves? Such instruction might bring into sharper reality the Chafee philosophy and also educate some future practising disciples. Such a course would deal with postal powers, the regulatory concepts of the Federal Com- munications Commission, the monopolies of the Associated Press, the giants of Holly- wood, world shortages of newsprint, et cetera, et cetera. It need not be pure philosophy-which at best is a means to an end. Above all it might bring some new vision, for example, to our attempts to control communism by inviting individuals to step up to the public counter and ask for the privilege of registering as pariahs and treasonable folk. I envy Chafee his contribution to our society and his deserved reputation in the field of his writings as distinguished from the field of his teaching. But we might by now have had wiser leadership throughout the nation if Chafee had taught at Harvard Law School courses on Civil Liberties. Hun-

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