As much as I would like to single out one person who had the most influence during my law school experience at Georgetown, like Kali Murray, I am going to break the rules here a little bit.

The greatest influence on me was, in fact, the course of study that I chose to pursue in my first year of law school. While most 1L’s take the traditional torts, contracts, property, etc., I was treated to a different group of classes that included: Bargain, Exchange & Liability; Property in Time; and Democracy & Coercion, to name a few. In addition, I took a small 1L Seminar on the different schools of legal thought (Critical Race Theory, Legal Process, Law & Economics), as well as a jurisprudence class called Legal Theory (where we read books like Anthony Kronman’s Lost Lawyer and Ronald Dworkin’s Law’s Empire).

All of these classes were part of the Section 3 experimental curriculum at Georgetown Law, which was created by a forward-looking group of professors who challenged the normal way of teaching law to students. The group who taught me in this experimental curriculum included many luminaries: Mark Tushnet (Government Processes), Wendy Perdue (Process), Mike Seidman (Democracy & Coercion and 1L Seminar), Dennis Patterson (visiting that year) (Legal Theory), Mike Gottesman (Bargain, Exchange & Liability), and Dan Ernst (Property in Time).

The combined Section 3 experience had a peculiar way of binding together not only the students who took this curriculum, but also the professors and students.

It was over in the twinkling of an eye. The entire event took, at most, ten seconds, but in that incredibly brief time I learned that the study of law was the right thing for me. The time was mid-September, 1963. The place was the old Georgetown University Law Center at 5th and E Streets, N.W. The room was shaped like a bowling alley. One hundred and twenty-five part-time evening students were shoehorned into that room. At precisely 5:45 P.M., Professor Thomas O’Toole entered the room from the back. It was the only way in and out of the room in which Constitutional law was being taught. Professor O’Toole took one step, paused, and from the back of the room, spoke in a loud, clear voice, “Mr. Chase, why was the Court in Euclid concerned about the scope of the town’s zoning plan?” Before Mr. Chase could answer, the Professor took another step into the room, paused, and said, “Mr. Kossow, why did I ask that question ?”

A few seconds later, after I had choked on an answer that included the words “comprehensive plan,” the Professor walked to the front of the class and said, “Mr. Hubbard, do you agree with Mr. Kossow’s answer?”

Forty-five years later, I remember verbatim the incident. Professor O’Toole, in ten seconds, changed the direction of my life.