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Reason and Imagination

Reason and Imagination The Selected Correspondence of Learned Hand

Author: Constance Jordan
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA
ISBN: 9780199899104
Published In: January 2013
Format: Hardback , 484 pages
Jurisdiction: U.S. ? Disclaimer:
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Includes never-before-published correspondence from one of America's greatest legal and political thinkers
Learned Hand's correspondence gives readers the opportunity to gain a heightened understanding of the greater political and legal atmosphere.
Provides an insightful, in-depth account of Learned Hand's professional and social career and his interactions with many of his era's most prominent figures, including Theodore Roosevelt and Oliver Wendel Holmes

Judge Learned Hand is an icon of American Law. Though he was never nominated to our country's highest court, Hand is nevertheless more frequently quoted by legal scholars and in Supreme Court decisions than any other lower court judge in our history. He was the model for all judges who followed him, setting the standard for the bench with a matchless combination of legal brilliance and vast cultural sophistication.

Hand was also renowned as a superb writer. Now, in Reason and Imagination, Constance Jordan offers a unique sampling of the correspondence between Hand and a stellar array of intellectual and legal giants, including Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Theodore Roosevelt, Walter Lippmann, Felix Frankfurter, Bernard Berenson, and many other prominent political and philosophical thinkers. The letters--many of which have never been published before--cover almost half a century, often taking the form of brief essays on current events, usually seen through the prism of their historical moment. They reflect Hand's engagement with the issues of the day, ranging from the aftermath of World War I and the League of Nations, the effects of the Depression in the United States, the rise of fascism and the outbreak World War II, McCarthyism, and the Supreme Court's decisions on segregation, among many other topics. Equally important, the letters showcase decades of penetrating and original thought on the major themes of American jurisprudence, particularly key interpretations of the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, and will thus be invaluable to those interested in legal issues.

Most of these letters have never before been published, making this collection a priceless window into the mind and life of one of the giants of American law.

Readership: Law students, scholars, and judges, general audience interested in legal history and biography.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Preface: correspondence to 1908
Part I: correspondence from 1909 to 1920
Part II: correspondence from 1921 to 1931
Part III: correspondence from 1932 to 1946
Part IV: correspondence from 1947 to 1957
Part V: correspondence from 1958 to 1961
Cases in correspondence
Selected Bibliography

Edited by Constance Jordan, Professor of English, Emerita, Claremont Graduate University

Preface by Ronald Dworken

Constance Jordan is Professor of English and Comparative Literature Emerita at Claremont Graduate University. Jordan has published many books and articles on the subject of literature and the law. She is also Learned Hand's granddaughter.

"Learned Hand earned a place among the great jurists of his age, worthy of comparison with the likes of Holmes, Brandeis, and Cardozo. This collection of letters helps us understand what a remarkable man he was. Reading these letters places us at the elbow of a man of uncommon erudition, a philosopher constantly asking questions about the world around him, a master of style and language. We are admitted to an age when letters, in the right hands, were essays on the human condition, on the great issues of the time. Dip into this book anywhere, and you will quickly be drawn into an evening of wit and wisdom."
--A.E. Dick Howard, White Burkett Miller Professor of Law and Public Affairs, University of Virginia