faculty perspective
Teaching three courses per semester must have meant that you taught a wide variety of courses. What did you teach at Willamette?
class who had taught at American law schools before entering the Yale J.S.D. program.
I taught Real Property, Personal Property, Criminal Law, Torts, Legislation and Legal Ethics. A unique asset of Willamette was our proximity to the Oregon Supreme Court. In one course I taught, I had students read the state Supreme Court documents on a case prior to oral argument before the Court. In a class session, the students made oral arguments on the case. When the case was argued before the Supreme Court, the students went to the Court and listened to the arguments. Often the student arguments were better than those of the lawyers.
You teach at Yale Law School today. Have your teaching methods changed since you taught at Willamette?
While at Willamette, I also was in charge of a legal clinic for course credit. At the time, there were only two or three full-time legal aid lawyers in Oregon. Willamette’s legal clinic was an innovative way of expanding legal services to the poor. The clinic’s principal function was assigning law students to assist local lawyers in pro bono cases that the lawyers were willing to take on. What were Willamette students like then, particularly the students attending classes under the GI Bill?
No. I use the very same method. There is discussion, some lecture and coverage of underlying policy issues and potential future developments. I currently teach two courses a year: Professional Responsibility in the fall and Land Transactions in the spring. What changes have you witnessed in the classroom?
“Willamette’s GI students were far more serious; some had been in a great deal of hand-to-hand and aircraft combat during the war. They were more intensely interested in getting ahead than any other students before or since.”
Willamette’s GI students were far more serious; some had been in a great deal of hand-to-hand and aircraft combat during the war. They were more intensely interested in getting ahead than any other students before or since. Their hard work compensated for academic backgrounds weaker than those of students today. These students were a great group — years behind schedule for achieving jobs, which explains their intensity. Willamette had a strict rule against drinking alcoholic beverages back then, on campus and off. The administration wisely chose not to enforce this rule. There were some carousers in the veterans group. I used to play golf with a lot of the students. Remember, we were about the same age. We were great friends, but it was clear to all that in class I was the boss. You left your job at Willamette to further your legal education? Yes, I went to Yale for a Doctor of the Science of Law (J.S.D.), which was a more common means than today for young American law teachers to expand their jurisprudential knowledge and to engage in a major writing project supervised by a highly respected scholar. Successful completion of a J.S.D. also increased the chances of obtaining a teaching position at a law school of higher reputation and with better pay. There were six of us in my J.S.D.
The absence of change has been remarkable — with the exception that the students rely on laptops in the classroom. Also, most examinations at Yale are open book, and that was rarely the case in the past. You have had a number of students over the years who have assumed high profile positions in the public and private sectors. Which of them stand out in your memory?
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took several courses from me and did some extensive writing. I remember him vividly. He was a quiet, serious student — always pleasant. He appeared to be, and he was, a small-town Georgian. He was quite determined to show that someone from his small-town background could perform on par with others who grew up with different advantages. You served as dean of a law school in Ethiopia in the 1960s. How did that opportunity come about? I taught one summer in Tanzania, which led people to believe that I knew something about African law schools. During the mid-1960s I was dean of the Haile Sellassie I University School of Law, now the Addis Ababa University School of Law. At that time there was great interest in funding and staffing East African universities as one means of countering the increasing influence of the Soviet Union in East African countries. The law schools that were heavily staffed and supported by U.S. and European sources during the 1960s had a big impact and were a very productive way of providing international aid. Such an effort would help to soften the high authoritarian level of African politics today.
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