Learned Hand

Billings Learned Hand was one of the most influential judges in America. In Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge, Gerald Gunther provides a complete and intimate account of the professional and personal life of Learned Hand. He conveys the substance and range of Hand's judicial and intellectual contributions with eloquence and grace. This second edition features photos of Learned Hand throughout his life and career, and includes a foreword by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Gunther, a former law clerk for Hand, reviewed much of Hand's published work, opinions, and correspondence. He meticulously describes Hand's cases, and discusses the judge's professional and personal life as interconnected with the political and social circumstances of the times in which he lived. Born in 1872, Hand served on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He clearly crafted and delivered thousands of decisions in a wide range of cases through extensive, conscientious investigation and analysis, while at the same time exercising wisdom and personal detachment. His opinions are still widely quoted today, and will remain as an everlasting tribute to his life and legacy.

Reason and Imagination: The Selected Correspondence of Learned Hand provides readers with an intimate look into the life and mind of Judge Learned Hand, an icon in American Law. This new book brings to light previously unpublished letters and gives readers insight into Hand's thoughts on American jurisprudence and policy. This new collection includes a preface by Ronald Dworkin.

A study of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Learned Hand was a federal judge from 1909 to 1951. He served for fifteen years as a district court judge and for twenty,seven years as judge of the United States Circuit Court, Second Circuit, sitting in New York City. This text reviews his opinions especially those relating to the proper function of the federal courts and his defense of the doctrine of judicial restraint.

Originally published in 1970. This is a study of one of the most highly respected tribunals in the history of the English-speaking world—the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Situated in Manhattan, the Second Circuit Court, serving New York, Connecticut, and Vermont, is the most important commercial court in the country. But, like other inferior courts, it has never been studied in depth. Marvin Schick provides a comprehensive analysis. From 1941 to 1951, Learned Hand presided over the Second Circuit as chief judge, and the court bore his stamp. But on its bench sat other men of great competence, judges Thomas W. Swan, August N. Hand, and Harrie B. Chase, as well as Charles E. Clark and Jerome N. Frank, whose constant disagreement characterized much of the court's work. Schick studies the Second Circuit Court from several angles: historical, biographical, behavioral, and case analytical. He tells a history of the court from its origins in 1789. He provides biographical sketches of the six judges who sat during Learned Hand's tenure as chief judge. He analyzes the many decisions handed down by the court, including the precedent setters. He examines the court's decision-making process, especially its unique procedures such as the memorandum system, which requires from the judges "preliminary opinions" in the cases they hear. A novel feature of this book is the correlation of votes of the Second Circuit judges with subsequent decisions of the Supreme Court. Schick was aided in his study by having access to the private papers of Judge Clark. These thousands of memoranda and letters throw much light on the workings of the Second Circuit Court and reveal the bargaining that went on among the judges in difficult cases. The Clark papers make possible a clearer understanding of the incessant conflict between Clark and Frank and show how this unusual relationship gave vitality to the Second Circuit.

Learned Hand, by general consent, is one of the most distinguished living Americans. It seemed to Irving Dillard, editor of the editorial page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (1949-57), that Judge Hand's non-legal addresses and papers ought to be available in volume form -- and this book is the result. Here, in speeches and articles covering a time-span of sixty-five years, is one of the truly liberal, incisive, and human voices of American life. On such subjects as justice, tolerance, democracy, liberty; on such men as Holmes, Brandeis, Cardozo, Stone, and Hughes; on the preservation of personality, the existence of a common will, the meaning of Americanism -- Judge Hand's living words are creative words with profound and enduring significance. Irving Dillard has supplied an Introduction that is a tribute to Learned Hand, and has prefaced each one of the forty-one addresses and papers with an informative note. The Spirit of Liberty is a heartening book for all Americans.

Henry Friendly is frequently grouped with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, and Learned Hand as the best American jurists of the twentieth century. In this first, comprehensive biography of Friendly, David M. Dorsen opens a unique window onto how a judge of this caliber thinks and decides cases, and how Friendly lived his life. During his time on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (1959–1986), Judge Friendly was revered as a conservative who exemplified the tradition of judicial restraint. But he demonstrated remarkable creativity in circumventing precedent and formulating new rules in multiple areas of the law. Henry Friendly, Greatest Judge of His Era describes the inner workings of Friendly’s chambers and his craftsmanship in writing opinions. His articles on habeas corpus, the Fourth Amendment, self-incrimination, and the reach of the state are still cited by the Supreme Court. Dorsen draws on extensive research, employing private memoranda between the judges and interviews with all fifty-one of Friendly’s law clerks—a veritable Who’s Who that includes Chief Justice John R. Roberts, Jr., six other federal judges, and seventeen professors at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and elsewhere. In his Foreword, Judge Richard Posner writes: “David Dorsen has produced the most illuminating, the most useful, judicial biography that I have ever read . . . We learn more about the American judiciary at its best than we can learn from any other . . . Some of what I’ve learned has already induced me to make certain changes in my judicial practice.”