Notables

     Part of your acculturation to the legal profession requires that you become familiar with the identity and contributions of notable judges and legal scholars.  Following are some brief introductions.

     Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870-1938) was one of the most acclaimed and influential judges of the twentieth century.  After practicing law in New York City, he served as judge and then Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals of New York and was appointed an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1932, where he served until his death.  The Nature of the Judicial Process is a compilation of his classic series of lectures on jurisprudence.  You may be interested in seeing his picture and comments about the writing style of his opinions and about his place in American jurisprudence, or a biographical sketch.

     Arthur Linton Corbin (1874-1967) taught Contracts and other subjects at Yale Law School for forty years, from 1903-1943. "Corbin on Contracts" is a classic treatise and his writings there and elsewhere are cited frequently by judges and legal scholars.  He contributed as Special Advisor and Reporter for the chapter on remedies of the (first) Restatement of Contracts.

     Learned Hand (1872-1961) was appointed to the District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1909 and to the prestigious United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1924 where he served until 1951.

     Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935) is one of the great figures in United States legal history and a key intellectual figure in the development of classical contract theory.  Following military service in the Civil War, he attended Harvard Law School.  After giving a famous series of lectures published as The Common Law (1881), he joined the Harvard Law School for a short time and then served for twenty years on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.   President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him to the United States Supreme Court on which he served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court until his retirement in 1932.  Among the many aphorisms for which he is famous, perhaps the most widely quoted is his statement that "[t]he life of the law has not been logic, but experience."

     Stanley Mosk (1912-2001) was appointed to the California Supreme Court in 1964, after serving as California Attorney General from 1959-1964.  In February 2000, he became the jurist with the longest tenure on the California Supreme Court, 35 years and 6 months.   Professor Vincent Martin Bonventre describes Justice Mosk as follows in an Editor's Foreward to an issue of the Albany Law Review dedicated to Justice Mosk:  "An institution, an icon, a trailblazer, a legal scholar, a constitutional guardian, a veritable living legend of the American judiciary, . . . one of the most influential members in the history of one of the most influential tribunals in the western world."  62 Albany L.Rev. 1213 (1999).  Professor Gerald Uelmen surveys the highlights of Justice Mosk's career as justice in a dedication at 62 Albany L.Rev. 1221 (1999).

     Richard Posner (1939-    ), sitting Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeal for the Seventh Circuit, is a leading proponent of the use of economic analysis in fashioning law, including common law, and his judicial opinions frequently reflect that philosophy.  He is a prolific author and speaker.  His views are provocative and controversial.

     Roger Traynor (1900-1983) was a distinguished and influential jurist of the twentieth century.  He served on the California Supreme Court from 1940 to 1970 and as its Chief Justice from 1964-1970.  During his service as Chief Justice, the California Supreme Court was one of the most respected and influential courts in the nation.  For a brief introduction to Justice Traynor's contribution to American jurisprudence, see the introduction in The Traynor Reader, published by the O'Brien Center for Scholarly Publications University of California Hastings College of the Law.  For a more complete biography and a bibliography of his publications, through 1966, see J.Johnson, History of the Supreme Court Justices of California, 1900-1950, Vol. 2, p.182 (Bancroft-Whitney 1966)

     Samuel Williston (1861-1963) taught Contracts and other subjects at Harvard Law School for forty-eight years, from 1890-1938.  "Williston on Contracts" is a classic treatise and his writings there and elsewhere are cited frequently by judges and legal scholars.  He was the Reporter for the first Restatement of Contracts and drafted several uniform acts, including the Uniform Sales Act that is the predecessor to Article Two of the Uniform Commercial Code.