The Law School's Fair Image

Abstract

The Law School did not have an image problem when I matriculated in 1948. That is because it didn't have much of an image one way or the other. It had struggled through the war years with reduced enrollment and a very nice dean named Wilber Katz (pronounced Kotz). He taught Corporate Management and Finance, had a deep concern about the miasma of the then-existing Illinois criminal procedure (and did something about it), and was very happy to pass off the deanship to one of the Young Turks who had joined the faculty during and after the war. It was quite a group of young bloods. Edward Levi, using two huge volumes of unindexed and home-grown materials, was teaching a course called Elements of the Law. None of us quite understood it, but were fascinated with both the course and him. He was Jekyll and Hyde: In class, he was master of the universe, with a needling sense of humor, and particularly ready to take on anyone who thought he knew all the answers. (I use the male gender advisedly; there were only three women in our class, and Levi was too chivalrous to trick them into his bag). Outside of class, he was meek and self-effacing, giving no one any premonitions of where he planned to go in his career. Walter Blum already was making a name for himself in the tax field. Harry Kalven, Jr., who had trouble getting his tenure piece written because he spent so much time with his students, and Bernard D. Meltzer, who had just come back from the Nuremberg War Crime Trials, rounded out the new kids on the faculty block. They had some peerless backstopping in the likes of Malcolm Sharp, who taught contracts and never heard a question or comment in class that wasn't interesting and worth pursuing; Charles 0. Gregory who taught torts and labor law, and never seemed to have a bad day; William Winslow Crosskey, who taught constitutional law in a way that fascinated his students, but didn't square with what the Supreme Court was saying about the Constitution; Sheldon Tefft, who taught property and who some of us believed had clerked for the judge who wrote the Rule in Shelley's Case; and Max Rheinstein, who taught comparative law to those who could wade through his marvelously