In Search of a New Paradigm

Abstract

Teaching law has its special pleasures. At Yale, they come in abundance, since our classes are small, the atmosphere is highly congenial, and we are given absolute freedom to teach what we want and when we want. Yet the joys of law teaching extend to the entire profession. Unencumbered by the demands of clients, bureaucratic procedures, and sectarian loyalties, law teachers in this country are free to engage the highest issues of state and to speak to them in whatever terms we deem appropriate. The one problem all of us in the profession labor under, and one that I feel acutely, is that of obsolescence. We stand before our students in 1995, and we build on books, classes, and professional experiences that reach back to the 1960's, sometimes even before. As teachers, we must constantly renew our own education-not just school education, but life education-so that we can speak to the issues that are of concern to our students now and that will be of concern to them in their careers and future lives. We need to prepare our students for a world that is so very different from ours. My involvement with the First Amendment began about twenty-five years ago. I was then a young professor at the University of Chicago, and got the chance to develop a close relationship with one of the leading figures in the field, Harry Kalven, Jr.' We spent much of our time together talking about free speech, and the special attraction that he felt towards the First Amendment inevitably rubbed off on me. In the Fall of 1974, just after I moved to Yale, Harry died and left as part of his legacy a huge manuscript that he had begun