Appreciating Our Professors: Dean Howard Eisenberg

Francis de Sales, the bishop of Geneva in the early 1600’s, said “the measure of love is to love without measure.” The late Dean Howard Eisenberg embodied this message. Dean Eisenberg gave his love without measure to the Law School, the legal community, and the pro bono clients he served.

I met Dean Eisenberg shortly after I graduated from college. At the time, I was teaching high school English. Dean Eisenberg talked to me about the legal profession as a helping profession — that lawyers are uniquely situated to protect and aid the individuals and entities they serve. Dean Eisenberg’s comments so inspired me that I decided to apply to law school. Dean Eisenberg’s presence at the Law School also convinced me that it was the right place to go to school. Any place, I thought, that had the good sense to have him at the helm was a place where I wanted to be.

In my second year of law school, Dean Eisenberg again influenced my life when I took his appellate advocacy course. That class turned me onto advocacy. I remember the thrill when I found the key case for my side in the Wisconsin reporter stacks. As I drafted the brief, I felt the joy of crafting language that would persuade a court. In that class, we also had to make an oral argument. I enjoyed turning my brief into an oral argument and observing how my use of language changed from its presentation in written form to oral form. I was hooked on advocacy, and I decided to go into litigation.

The last memory I have of Dean Eisenberg came two weeks before his untimely death.

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Appreciating Our Professors: Larry Lessig

I’m never any good at these questions. I’m always stumped whenever I’m asked, “Who is your hero?” Similarly, although I enjoyed many of my classes, I don’t recall too many “ah-ha” moments in law school that didn’t come from reading a book or an article. For whatever reason, I’m more inspired by ideas than people.

And the idea that I picked up in law school that inspired me more than any other was the idea that law is part of a broader web of human culture, that it both influences other aspects of that culture and is influenced by it. I encountered (at least) two professors at Yale who were grappling with this concept, Bob Ellickson and Larry Lessig. Well, Lessig was only a visitor during the spring semester of my first year. On the other hand, I never took a class with Ellickson, and I’m not sure I’ve even ever met him. I know Ellickson primarily through his classic, Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes.

So Lessig it is.

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“When The Gods Wish To Punish Us, They Answer Our Prayers”

I am, without question, a spiritual man. I don’t know that I’d go so far as to call myself “religious”; it’s not easy to keep one’s faith while surrounded on most sides by a grab for the most money, as law school tends to be. However, I’ve always balanced my strong personal belief in the value of (and my regular practice of) prayer with what I consider to be the immeasurable importance of the separation of church and state. Usually, this means I just let public showings of religion roll off my back; I’m not offended by choruses of “Merry Christmas,” and I didn’t gripe when benedictions have been said at Marquette gatherings I’ve attended. By and large, I’m a big fan of keeping a healthy dose of perspective; if one puts oneself in situations where prayer is likely to be found (for example, by attending a Jesuit law school), one needs to expect that prayers are going to happen and not take it as an affront to the First Amendment. Put another way, who does it really hurt if I observe 30 seconds of silence so that someone else can pray uninterrupted?

All that being said, this PrawfsBlawg post — written by Mississippi Law Professor Chris Lund — got me thinking about whether it’s reasonable to accept prayer in all circumstances. Lund discusses the “legislative prayer controversy,” which he illustrates by linking to an article about a 70-year-old man’s arrest for praying loudly over a City Council’s moment of silence, as well as a video clip of protesters interrupting the opening prayer of last year’s Senate session, which was given by guest Congressional chaplain (and Hindu) Rajan Zed.

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