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Home > Journals > Michigan Law Review > MLR > Volume 102 > Issue 8 (2004)

 

Abstract

Yale does have, as Nancy King has said, a story for every occasion. Many of my favorites - and I definitely have my share - reflect Yale's gaudium certaminis: his "joy of battle" in Gerald Gunther's helpful translation. Some of Yale's battles I have only heard or read about. A few of the more memorable ones from over the years include Yale's confrontations with Glanville Williams, Fred Inbau, Joe Grano, John Kaplan, James Vorenberg, Robert Bork, Malcolm Wilkey, Edward Barrett, and Yale's former teacher Herbert Wechsler. And let's not forget the numerous law-enforcement officials Yale caught in his sights at one moment or the other, among them Ronald Reagan's Attorney General Edwin Meese, and one-time New York City Police Commissioner Michael Murphy. As for Yale's more recent skirmishes (those from the last decade or so), I've had the privilege of witnessing them in real time: with Akhil Amar, for instance, and of course Paul Cassell, as well as Robert Sedler, Sylvia Law, John Robertson, Laurence Tribe, and Guido Calabresi. Aside from their sheer number, perhaps the most remarkable feature of Yale's battle-tales, and also one of the easiest to overlook, is that even in their most dramatic moments, they feature no enduring enemies, only adversaries, sometimes friends. Yale has - or has come to have - something kind to say about practically everyone with whom he has crossed swords during his fifty-odd year career. But there are a few characters in the stories that Yale tells (and if you noodge him enough, retells) who never emerge entirely unscathed. On this roster, interestingly, are a few who have served as Justices of the Supreme Court, including someone who once described himself in the third person as "a fellow named Felix Frankfurter."

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