2015 Commencement Speaker - The Honorable Guido Calabresi

2015 COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER

Presentation by The Honorable Judge Guido Calabresi May 09, 2015—Athletic Convocation and Wellness Center

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REMARKS OF THOMAS P. FOLEY, JD

President, Mount Aloysius College

Judge Guido Calabresi, you are an internationally celebrated “prophet of the law,” a revered senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, a beloved former Dean of Yale Law School, a groundbreaking legal scholar and a careful tender of torts and of life. Even these singular descriptives only begin to touch the breadth and depth of your lifelong story, still in the making.

Where to begin? Born in Milan, Italy in 1932, your family—active in the resistance—escaped the fascists for America in 1939. You were seven. You became a naturalized citizen in 1948. You were 16. You graduated first in your class from Yale University. You were not yet 21. A Rhodes Scholar, you earned a Master’s degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) from Magdalen College at Oxford. You were 22. Returning to Yale, you graduated first in your class from its law school. You were 25. You clerked for Justice Hugo Black on the United States Supreme Court. You were 26.

Then, in 1959, you joined the faculty at Yale Law School. You were about to turn 27, and just about two decades removed from your parents’ fight with their colleagues in the resistance and your family’s flight from the clutches of Mussolini. What a story, even had it stopped right there.

But it didn’t. In the five decades since becoming—still—the youngest professor in the storied history of Yale Law School, you have literally written or re-written the casebook in multiple fields of law. First, you established

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and became the leader of an entirely new branch of the centuries old field of torts law. You did this by conceiving brave new economic theories and welding those theories to your personal determination to prevent accidents and injuries—and not just “sort out” plaintiffs and defendants.

Your common sense approach—finding the “least cost avoider”—has promoted “the good life” for literally millions of people whose uncommon injuries from commonplace accidents were “avoided” by your brilliant application of economic incentives directly on those in the best position to prevent that accident from happening again.

Second, you challenged, four decades before we ever even heard the term “death panels,” the very notion of delivering health care on a purely economic model. Your seminal text on the subject, your numerous articles in law journals and the popular press and your prize-winning lectures on what you termed “tragic choices” literally wrote and then rewrote the textbooks and the case law in this field. Before anyone else was even worrying about how to apportion scarce health care resources—like kidney dialysis machines, artificial hearts and the like— you were inciting a generation of us—lawyers and doctors and policy makers alike—to identify, address and resolve these “tragic choices” in ways more palpably humane and less purely economic. Your first book on the subject is still required reading in law, medical and public policy schools across the country, whenever they address the notion of fair distribution of dwindling resources.

Judge Calabresi, in your ongoing career, you have written six seminal books and more than 100 peer-reviewed articles. You have delivered dozens of prize lectures to college audiences, institute think tanks and governments around the world. And you have received over 50 honorary degrees from universities in the United States and abroad.

But your contributions to your profession did not stop with brave new theories of law, unprecedented mergers of economic theory and common sense, or prize winning lectures. During your career as legal scholar, professor and Dean at Yale you have attracted and taught an amazing number of notable legal minds and people who became game changers in fields far apart from the law.

They are too numerous to mention here, but many of the students whom you personally mentored during your five decades as professore have gone on to the highest levels of service in our country and in our world, serving as leaders of both for and non-profit law practices, as deans and directors at some of the foremost institutions in the world, as cabinet members and policy makers in governments at home and abroad and as presidents of

countries and colleges. As we stand here today, three of your students sit on the United States Supreme Court.

Indeed, when Yale created the Guido Calabresi Professorship of Law, they recognized not just your sterling contributions to the law, but your mentorship of so many generations of future leaders. You challenged each of them with that famous, formidable intellect but you also wrapped them in the warmth of that Calabresi smile and in the mantle of fierce affection that is your hallmark.

Today, we recognize and applaud the achievements that mark all the decades of your life—some of these achievements public and unprecedented, many of them quiet and personal, all of them remarkable. But Mount Aloysius honors you today for your essential personal story—the lifeline that began for you in 1939. Since emigrating to this country, you have built a “good life” in the law and in your home by synthesizing faith with learning, by developing competence with compassion, by putting your talents and gifts at the service of others and by assuming leadership in the world community. That is our Mount Aloysius core philosophy; many of our students know it by heart; you have taken it to heart in your five decades of service to your students, to the law and to your adopted country. And it is your humanity, your generosity of spirit, your pursuit of “excellence with decency” that makes you a treasure for those whose lives you touch.

We recognize here today your ongoing quest for a just world that is not blinded to those least among us. That quest and your devotion to it has marked your own life as truly a “good life”—both in the context of the world of law and in the artful way in which you touch those people in your life as son, scholar, teacher, judge, husband, father, and friend.

Finally, we want to acknowledge your family today, those touched most deeply by “the good life” you have created—your wife, Anne Gordon Audubon TylerCalabresi, a social anthropologist, freelance writer, social activist, philanthropist and arts patron, and your three children— Dr. Bianca Finzi-Contini Calabresi, Dr. Anne Gordon Audubon Calabresi, and Massimo Franklin Tyler Calabresi. Your story is also their story to an extent, and we acknowledge their part in this honor that we bestow this day.

We now, therefore, confer upon you, Judge Guido Calabresi—scholar, author, judge, and good friend to so many—the degree of Humane Letters, honoris causa, this Ninth Day of May, Two Thousand and Fifteen.

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REMARKS OF The Honorable Judge Guido Calabresi

Senior Judge - US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Professor, Yale Law School Hi. I am, though tempted, not going to try to sing like Adam did in his Welcome. I think that would take away from all those hyperbolic words that Tom just spoke.

It’s an extraordinary joy and honor to be here at Mount Aloysius for many reasons. I’ll just mention two.

One is that this school — in its background and in its development — is strikingly similar to a school in New Haven also founded by sisters, called Albertus Magnus College. My mother taught there for many years — she was one of the first lay teachers. And so it’s wonderful to come to another place like it, to see it flourishing, and to think of her.

The second reason is because your President, Tom Foley, is one of my kids. I call all of these characters who’ve studied with me, kids. Even some who became President. And it’s a delight today to get a degree here and become one of his kids, like you.

This was described in the sublime by Dante, when he spoke of the Virgin Mary as, Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio — Virgin Mother, daughter of your son.

From the sublime to the trivial, but I am your son, my son. Kids.

So thank you for making me a member of the Class of 2015.

You’ve been talking all year about The Good Life.

And that’s too big a topic to talk about seriously at Commencement, when any time I take detracts from

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the core event, and that is you and your graduation. So I’ll say just a few words about a happy life.

And then, being a storyteller, tell a couple of stories that may link a happy life to a good life.

It’s hard to live a good life if you are not happy. And the story of being happy, of a happy life, is actually quite easily described. It involves two things. One, find something to do — work — which is fun and useful. Fun and useful.

If it is just fun, over the years it starts to jade and not become good. If it is just useful, it will wear you down.

I have never done a day’s work in my life. I love to teach. I love to judge. I’d pay to do it. You have been trained in this place, given the opportunity to do something which is fun and useful. Don’t settle for anything less. Find

something that gives you pleasure when you’re doing it and allows you to do something useful.

thing is to give. To give. We all know that. Every faith, every religion, says “give.”

The second part is to find somebody to spend your life with.

I’ve been married — in a week and a half — it will be 54 years. That is essential, also.

But what is it that you give? You know, most of the time, when people talk about giving, they talk about giving money. And that’s important. But sometimes, giving money is nothing. If you have a lot of money, giving some money isn’t doing anything at all. What you must give is that which you find scarce. That which you don’t have much of, that which you would rather keep to yourself.

For some people, finding the thing to do is easy and finding one’s life-partner takes more time. For others, it’s the other way around.

But you need to do both. And you need to give the time, the compromises, and the giving of yourself to find both. Don’t cheat yourself out of either. Look to do both, and then you will lead a happy life.

Okay. But a happy life on this basis is only the grounding, the beginning of a good life. So how do you make your joyous work into a good life? Well, the main

If you are wealthy, giving money is easy. If you are poor, giving money is enormous. If you are busy or if you are old and you don’t know how much time you have left, then giving time, giving of yourself, is what is hard. Give that which you don’t have much of and which you would like to keep. You know? Like everything else, it’s in the Gospel. Jesus walks into the synagogue and sees wealthy people putting gold coins in the plate. And he sees a widow putting in a copper coin and He says, she has given much more, because she has given from her poverty. They have given from their excess.

Take the goodness, the happiness of your life, the work you do, which is fun and useful, and your partnership, and together give that which you don’t have much of and which you would like to keep — give that to the service of others.

And then, this happy life will remain happy but will also be good.

And then you’ll fail. You know?

You won’t do it. They’ll be plenty

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of times when you don’t. You won’t. I didn’t. You know? It’s inevitable.

And when that happens, that is the interesting question. And here I tell a story.

Many years ago in Italy, in 1943, some cousins of mine had to go into hiding because they are of Jewish ancestry. And in 1943, the Germans, the Nazis, moved in and were looking for anyone who had Jewish blood, to take away and send to Auschwitz.

These cousins of mine went into hiding with assumed names in the villa of my cousin’s wife, who was of an old, old Catholic family.

And while they were hiding there, living under assumed names, the Germans took over the villa to make into their headquarters.

What an extraordinary situation.

The Germans there in their headquarters, and these people who were being looked for, hiding with assumed names.

And the captain in charge of that outfit, of that villa, was a dreadful man. He would get drunk, try to

steal things, break down the room of my cousin’s wife’s sister to attack her. And they managed to keep that from happening. He was awful. Just awful.

One day, my cousin’s son, who was then five years old, was playing in the garden. And the captain called him by his assumed last name. He said, “Come here...” adding his last name. And the little boy forgot his name. Forgot his false name.

And the German captain called him again by that name. And the little boy still didn’t answer. And the captain went up to him and grabbed him by the shoulder and

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said, “That is not your name.” And the little boy said, “No.” And the captain, “That is not your name, because you’re Jewish!” And the little boy said, “Yes,” and ran off.

And the family waited to be taken away. Taken away. But nothing happened... nothing happened at all.

This awful captain, at that point, did something transcendentally good. He risked his life, because if any of the other soldiers heard the exchange and saw that he didn’t turn these people in, he was dead.

But that was something evil that he could not do. And that event changed him, made him another person. Saved him.

I doubt if when you fail you will be put in as dramatic a situation as that captain. But what I do know is that no matter how often you fail and how awful you feel about yourself when you fail, you will be given a chance — less dramatic than that of the captain, perhaps, or dramatic, perhaps — to do something that is good and that will overcome whatever failures you have had.

Don’t be discouraged. Don’t be wiped out by your failures. Take that chance that will be given to you and make it good.

But be careful. Because you may think that you won’t fail. That you are so good — and you are good — that you will do nothing wrong.

And here is my second story. My story is about one of the worst things that this country — that took me in and that I love so much — did. During the Second World War, America put people, Americans born in America, of Japanese ancestry, in concentration camps.

They put them away in terrible conditions. The people who did that, some of them, were people we’d call nasty. But three people who allowed it to happen are people who many of us, I in particular, would say were very good.

The person who okayed it first was Earl Warren, who was Attorney General of California, and who

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became a great and wonderful Chief Justice. The person who allowed it to happen from Washington was Franklin Roosevelt, a fantastically good President. And the person who wrote the opinion that upheld it was Jutice Hugo Black, who gave his life for integration and desegregation. So much so, that his home state said he couldn’t be buried in Alabama soil, they were so angry with him for doing what he did for integration. This was a person for whom I clerked. And yet, he wrote the opinion upholding that action.

Now, it would be easy to say they weren’t really good people. And that would be a nice wipeout for you.

You’d say, oh well, it won’t happen to me, because I’m clean. But the answer is, of course, that they were good people, but they made a terrible, terrible set of decisions.

You know, if you are so clean that you don’t think you need to wash, after a while you start to smell. And no matter how good you think you are, you will, if you’re not very careful, do some things which are deeply wrong.

But when that happens, remember the Nazi captain and remember that there are always ways, always times to come back and to be the good person that you want to be and can be. If you do that, if you don’t get discouraged when you fail, if you know that you may fail and still look for chances to do the right thing, if you give of what is scarce and if you live the happy life by choosing something to do which is fun and useful together with a partner who helps you in your failures and your strengths, you will not only lead a good life, but you will make this place, your teacher’s here, your parents and friends, immensely proud of you, as they should be.

Thank you very much.

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