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Details
- As a former law clerk of Learned Hand, Gerald Gunther offers a unique perspective of the life of this prominent judge.
- Gunther provides an in-depth account of the Learned Hand's professional and social career.
- Gunther's exclusive access to Learned Hand's papers gives the reader the opportunity to gain an understanding of Hand's own personal opinions.
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.
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Gerald Gunther (1927-2002) was a professor of constitutional law for almost 50 years, at Stanford University and Columbia University. Before writing Learned Hand: the Man and the Judge he authored Constitutional Law, during his lifetime the most widely used textbook in its field.
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"A great constitutional scholar tells us about the life and work of a great judge. Gunther's insights into Hand's approach to law are deep, and the story of Hand's life is truly engaging. Anyone interested in the most important figures of American law should read this book."
--Mark Tushnet
William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
"Gerald Gunther was one of the twentieth century's greatest constitutional scholars, and he considered this book to be his most important work. Taking more than twenty years to write, it is a testament to its subject and its author. Gunther shows us why Hand, in decisions made over fifty years, was a great but flawed judge who perhaps deserves to be ranked second only to John Marshall in his enduring influence on American law. No book teaches us more about judging and how to write about it than this magisterial biography."
--Michael J. Gerhardt
Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor, UNC-Chapel Hill Law School
"Fifteen years after it first appeared, Gerald Gunther's Learned Hand still sets the gold-standard for judicial biography. Comprehensive, historically precise, and psychologically astute, this monumental book rewards reading and re-reading. As a study of how ideas are born and expressed through real lives, it is a model of readable scholarship. Through it, Professor Gunther proved once and for all that historical narrative is indispensable for understanding our Constitution and laws."
-- Noah Feldman
Bemis Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
