Books May 1994
“The Tenth Justice”
A review of Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge by Gerald Gunther.
If he would be a great lawyer, he must first consent to become a great drudge.
—Daniel Webster
The name of Billings Learned Hand (1872–1961) cast a long shadow over our first year of law school. As a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for more than thirty-five years, Hand—along with his more pedestrian cousin, Augustus “Gus” N. Hand, and former Yale professor Thomas Swan—had made that court the most respected in the nation. His appointment to the circuit in 1924 followed hard upon fifteen years of distinguished service on the federal trial court bench in Manhattan. Indeed, when Hand’s contemporary, Justice Benjamin Cardozo, was asked which of his Supreme Court colleagues was the greatest living American jurist, Cardozo replied, “The greatest living American jurist isn’t on the Supreme Court.” He was, of course, referring to...
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