Document Type
Tribute
Publication Date
11-2004
Abstract
When I first met Lee Teitelbaum at a conference two decades ago, I was a novice and he a distinguished scholar. Because my colleagues admired him, I rang his room at the hotel and asked him to join me for dinner. He sweetly agreed. When he opened his door to my knock, I realized that he set standards I could never match-sartorial standards. Who was this king of glory? 1 stood there in my Oshkosh khakis and running shoes, agape and abashed. Despite this unpropitious start, our friendship ripened, and soon I realized Lee set standards of a finer and rarer sort. In my first years of teaching, 1 had begun to ask Justice Holmes' question: Can you live greatly in the law? I saw that it isn't good for you to be a teacher, to be deferred to, to be surrounded by people asking you to relieve their ignorance and supply their wants. It isn't good for you to be as sure of your skills and as confident in your conclusions as law faculties are. It surely isn't good for you to be a dean. But what could it mean to "live greatly in the law" in a century which finds so grand a goal disconcerting and even embarrassing? Unassumingly and unpretentiously, Lee's life answered that question.
Recommended Citation
Schneider, Carl E. "Dedicated to the Memory of Lee E. Teitelbaum (1941-2004)." Cornell L. Rev. 90, no. 1 (2004): 5-8.