Harvard Law School - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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D E D IC ' to the memory of Learned Hand Y X 7 ITH the passing of judge Hand in August, 1961, the world lost a great man. To generations of Harvard Law School students, this man was an inspiration and a teacher. Though never a member of the faculty, it would be diiiicult if not impossible, to find the course in which his opinions have not been cited as outstanding writings in the Held. Born january 27, 1872, he held A.B., A.M., and LL.B. degrees from Harvard. His judicial career covered more than forty years, as U. S. District judge for the Southern District of New York from 1909 to 1924, and as judge of the U. S. Circuit Court, 2d Circuit from 1925 until his retirement in 1951 - a retirement in name only. During this time, he was awarded more than a dozen doctoratesg he was a mem- ber of the American Law Institute, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and the American Bar Association. These few facts, however, do not tell the real story of his greatness. For this, one must read the many tributes written about himg one must read the opinions and speeches he wrote, and one must talk to the thousands of Harvard graduates. With all respect and admiration, the 1962 Harvard Law School Yearbook is therefore dedicated to the memory of the Honorable Learned Hand, a great man and a great teacher- of the Law and of Life. Meager is the survival value of judges even with- in the legal profession, and writers on Kulturge- rrhiclate hardly take note of them. Rarest of all is the judge whose utterances serve as moral guides for his time. Less than a handful of the thousand judges who have occupied 'high judicial office dur- ing this century achieved this significance. Learned Hand was one of them, and by the time he reached old age he had become a legendary figure of wis- dom, One can fix a specific date to the origin of this role, after he had been a judge for thirty-six years and had established his judicial pre-eminence but was hardly known outside his profession. By a single brief utterance of about five hundred words, spoken on May 21, 1944, in administering the oath to new citizens in Central Park, New York City, he lept into popular acclaim and he sus- tained this position until his death,sixteen years later. The occasion, on an I-Am-An-American Day, was front page news, and the main addresses, by a. leading Senator and an eminent divine, received full reportage. Their utterances gather dust with the newspapers of the day in which judge Hand's presence was noted as the administrator of the oath, but not 'a word of his now famous utterance Q The Spirit of Libertyuj. A few weeks later a writer, 4 who happened to hear the speech over the radio and, hearing it, caught its significance, by a piece in The New Yorker started the speech on its road to permanence. judge Hand's contributions as a judge in the extensive Helds of adjudication that came before him for more than fifty years, in those busy federal courts sitting in New York City, will form an important part of the body of American law during the twentieth century, Different aspects of his work were dealt with by specialists in the February issue of the Harvard Law Review Q60 Harv. L. Rev. 325, et feqj in celebration of his 75th birth- day. Future studies will enlarge and sharpen these critical essays. But even those opinions of judge Hand's vast output which disclose freshness of thought and fruitful insight are subject to the mortality of all judicial labor, barring only few doctrines of public law, like those associated with the name of Chief justice Marshall, that will en- dure as long as the political framework survives of which they form a part. But Learned Hand's wis- dom as a commentator on life are expressed in speech that will be enshrined in anthologies of Engish prose. Faux FRANKFURTER.

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THE SPIRIT CF LIBERTY In the critieul World War II year of 1944 a vast I Am an American Day ceremony was held in Central Park, New York City, on May 21. Many thourandr of people were present, including a large number of new citizens. Learned I-Iand'.f brief address war .ro eloquent and Jo mouin g that the text immediately became the object of wide demand. We have gathered here to afiirm a faith, a faith in a common purpose, a common con- viction, a common devotion. Some of us have chosen America as the land of our adoption, the rest have come from those who did the same. For this reason we have some right to consider ourselves a picked group, a group of those who had the courage to break from the past and brave the dangers and the loneliness of a strange land. What was the object that nerved us, or those who went before us, to this choice? We sought libertyg freedom from oppression, freedom from want, freedom to be ourselves. This we then sought, this we now believe that we are by way of winning. What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes, believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women, when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled willg it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few, as we have learned to our sorrow. What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define itg I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is rightg the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women, the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias, the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheededg the spirit of-liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotteng that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest. And now in that spirit, that spirit of an America which has never been, and which may never beg nay which never will be except as the conscience and courage of Americans create itg yet in the spirit of that America which lies hidden in some form in the aspirations of us all, in the spirit of that America for which our young men are at this moment fighting and dying, in that spirit of liberty and of America I ask you to rise and with me pledge our faith in the glorious destiny of our beloved country. LEARNED HAND