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Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge
Gunther presents an account of the life of one of the great judges of the 20th century, whose work has left a profound mark on our legal landscape. Although he was never appointed to the Supreme Court, Learned Hand is widely considered the peer of Justices Holmes, Brandeis and Cardozo. In his more than 50 years on the bench, he left an unequaled legacy of lastingly influential writings.
864 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
April 6, 2019
Hand was often called the "Tenth Justice" for the insight of his rulings from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, where he served more than 40 years, most of that on active duty, and also much of that as chief judge of the circuit.
Insightful, and skeptical of himself and his judgment at times as much as anything, Hand was most articulate as a defender of the First Amendment, especially in his ruling the Masses case, which was nonetheless overturned by the Supreme Court. His understanding of free speech and its need for protection in anything short of imminent incitement to violence was more rigorous than Holmes' "clear and present danger" standard the Supreme Court eventually adopted when partially reversing itself on Masses some time later.
Hand was more than once a possible High Court nominee. In the 1920s, the arch-conservative Chief Justice Taft scotched such chances. Hand, a Progressive Republican who occasionally voted Democrat, was not actually THAT liberal. But he was way too much so for Taft, who controlled Harding and later guided Coolidge in his one appointment. Hoover apparently never considered him for either of his two associate justice picks. In his last shot in 1942, FDR was pressured by Felix Frankfurter for the spot that opened when Charles Evans Hughes retired as chief and Harlan Fiske Stone was elevated.
But, Gunter says that Hand was not a strong New Deal supporter, and FDR wanted to lock that more in place. Plus, he was 70 years old.
That said, from my modern political point of view, while Hand would have been better than Owen Roberts by Hoover, he was not a Cardozo. And, his last shot with Roosevelt? Even though Rutledge died young, Gunther notes that Hand would have been highly simpatico with Frankfurter. Given that Frankfurter later misled him about the nature of the Brown ruling and Hand eventually accepted that understanding and even wrote about it, a Justice Hand could have been bad for the court in some ways.
Plus, like Frankfurter and even beyond, he didn't believe in being more activist in civil liberties cases in general. And Gunther notes that, like Holmes, he was highly deferential to legislatures. Had he indeed been appointed, and served until, say, 1956, when Rutledge's replacement Minton resigned, he would have formed a more intellectual block for judicial restraint than Frankfurter did by himself.
So, this book is great in explaining why it's not all bad that he wasn't one of the Nine.
But, Gunther, a former law clerk of Hand's, makes this a full biography, not just a legal biography. This is a great read.
Insightful, and skeptical of himself and his judgment at times as much as anything, Hand was most articulate as a defender of the First Amendment, especially in his ruling the Masses case, which was nonetheless overturned by the Supreme Court. His understanding of free speech and its need for protection in anything short of imminent incitement to violence was more rigorous than Holmes' "clear and present danger" standard the Supreme Court eventually adopted when partially reversing itself on Masses some time later.
Hand was more than once a possible High Court nominee. In the 1920s, the arch-conservative Chief Justice Taft scotched such chances. Hand, a Progressive Republican who occasionally voted Democrat, was not actually THAT liberal. But he was way too much so for Taft, who controlled Harding and later guided Coolidge in his one appointment. Hoover apparently never considered him for either of his two associate justice picks. In his last shot in 1942, FDR was pressured by Felix Frankfurter for the spot that opened when Charles Evans Hughes retired as chief and Harlan Fiske Stone was elevated.
But, Gunter says that Hand was not a strong New Deal supporter, and FDR wanted to lock that more in place. Plus, he was 70 years old.
That said, from my modern political point of view, while Hand would have been better than Owen Roberts by Hoover, he was not a Cardozo. And, his last shot with Roosevelt? Even though Rutledge died young, Gunther notes that Hand would have been highly simpatico with Frankfurter. Given that Frankfurter later misled him about the nature of the Brown ruling and Hand eventually accepted that understanding and even wrote about it, a Justice Hand could have been bad for the court in some ways.
Plus, like Frankfurter and even beyond, he didn't believe in being more activist in civil liberties cases in general. And Gunther notes that, like Holmes, he was highly deferential to legislatures. Had he indeed been appointed, and served until, say, 1956, when Rutledge's replacement Minton resigned, he would have formed a more intellectual block for judicial restraint than Frankfurter did by himself.
So, this book is great in explaining why it's not all bad that he wasn't one of the Nine.
But, Gunther, a former law clerk of Hand's, makes this a full biography, not just a legal biography. This is a great read.
January 28, 2022
Like any good biography, this gives the reader a distinctive portrait of a distinctive human being. One cannot read this book without coming away impressed with Learned Hand's personal charm, his tolerant and searching mind, his kindness and consideration, as well as his personnel anxiety and self-doubt, which helped create that tolerance and kindness towards others. The reader also cannot help but be impressed by Hand's writing style, which is always conversational and yet, as benefits his name, learned. It was his writing that took this son of an Albany lawyer, Samuel Hand, who died in Hand's adolescence, to Harvard Law School, and then to a U.S. District Court judgeship in 1909, and then to a 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals judgeship in 1924, on which he served until 1951, and then at which he continued to work, in semi-retired status, right up until his death in 1961, at almost 90 years old. In his last days he was complaining to Justice Felix Frankfurter that he worried he wasn't writing judicial opinions fast enough, which shows both his dedication to what he considered his "craft" and his perpetual self-questioning.
Yet this book often leaves one wondering how Hand became so feted, and so important. At his death, and for decades earlier, he was celebrated as the "greatest American jurist of the age." All knew he should have been on the Supreme Court, but the opposition of Chief Justice Taft in the 1920s (who could never forgive Hand's work with the Bull Moose campaign), and then President Hoover's promising a seat to Charles Evan Hughes, and then, in FDR's selections, Hand's advanced age, which Roosevelt had just attacked the sitting justices for, made this an impossibility. Sometimes his amusing and thoughtful speeches became popular, but he made a habit to refuse most of them, and so these are not the real root of his reputation.
In the end, Hand's reputation must rest, of course, on his voluminous judicial output. And we surprisingly see too little of that in this book. Much of the book is taken up with letters on the events of the day to other personages, from George Rublee to, until their break, Walter Lippman. These make Hand seem informed but not involved. His big judicial decisions, around patent and admiralty law, on which he became an expert, are passed over quickly. One exception is his "Masses" decision, of 1917, which proposed a broad First Amendment that protected all except direct "incitement," but this decision was soon denounced by the Supreme Court and the rest of the legal profession. Another is his ruling in the US v. Dennis case, of 1951, which upheld the conviction of Communist Party members, but which was mainly a gloss on contemporary Supreme Court precedence, which he felt obliged to uphold against his own First Amendment beliefs. As befits a circuit court judge, most of his decisions he felt forced to align with precedent, and thus not be too original.
So Hand was smart and kind and considerate. He was friends with many of the important personages of the day, and his name became a household word. I just wish I knew a little better why he became known as "the greatest American jurist of the age."
Yet this book often leaves one wondering how Hand became so feted, and so important. At his death, and for decades earlier, he was celebrated as the "greatest American jurist of the age." All knew he should have been on the Supreme Court, but the opposition of Chief Justice Taft in the 1920s (who could never forgive Hand's work with the Bull Moose campaign), and then President Hoover's promising a seat to Charles Evan Hughes, and then, in FDR's selections, Hand's advanced age, which Roosevelt had just attacked the sitting justices for, made this an impossibility. Sometimes his amusing and thoughtful speeches became popular, but he made a habit to refuse most of them, and so these are not the real root of his reputation.
In the end, Hand's reputation must rest, of course, on his voluminous judicial output. And we surprisingly see too little of that in this book. Much of the book is taken up with letters on the events of the day to other personages, from George Rublee to, until their break, Walter Lippman. These make Hand seem informed but not involved. His big judicial decisions, around patent and admiralty law, on which he became an expert, are passed over quickly. One exception is his "Masses" decision, of 1917, which proposed a broad First Amendment that protected all except direct "incitement," but this decision was soon denounced by the Supreme Court and the rest of the legal profession. Another is his ruling in the US v. Dennis case, of 1951, which upheld the conviction of Communist Party members, but which was mainly a gloss on contemporary Supreme Court precedence, which he felt obliged to uphold against his own First Amendment beliefs. As befits a circuit court judge, most of his decisions he felt forced to align with precedent, and thus not be too original.
So Hand was smart and kind and considerate. He was friends with many of the important personages of the day, and his name became a household word. I just wish I knew a little better why he became known as "the greatest American jurist of the age."
August 30, 2021
Exhaustive, insightful and fascinating with some occasional divergences into what I thought to be incredibly detailed legal theory. Perhaps that’s why in the foreword RBG reports that David Souter thought it should be required reading for any new judge. Reading this book allowed me to acknowledge and accept what a dilettante I am regarding the law: broad legal strokes are absolutely riveting to me but the nitty gritty parsing of the legality of this word vs that word can be mind-numbingly dull. I’m so glad I didn’t follow all of my friends to law school all those years ago!
So my review in a nutshell - painfully detailed at times but the majority of the book was vivid and alive. You will come away with a real sense and appreciation of who Judge Hand was as a person and how his mind worked.
So my review in a nutshell - painfully detailed at times but the majority of the book was vivid and alive. You will come away with a real sense and appreciation of who Judge Hand was as a person and how his mind worked.
October 19, 2017
This is an excellent book. I read a great deal of academic work and I left confess that I found this one engaging. The description on this site is quite adequate and does not need money for the exclamation. My only comment is that I liked it and for me who has two college degrees and has done a great deal of academic reading that is quite a compliment. I had never read about this man and I was interested to learn about the cases he wrote opinions on and to make comparisons with how they have affected further later decisions and history. I found some of the political comments in the book consummate with some of the trends. Occurring in our country in these days. I really enjoyed this book and for me that and saying quite a bit. I would like to read more work I Mr. Gunter.
May 15, 2023
A fascinating book about a fascinating and accomplished man. Every law student has read many of his decisions during law school. But while I know many of his decisions, I knew nothing of his life or his politics. I found both to be fascinating, and was unaware of his connections to President T. Roosevelt (who is one of my historical heroes). I was a great book.
November 29, 2020
More like four and a half stars.
September 23, 2013
I put this book down because something about it was bothering me, but I'm not sure what.
Having picked it back up, I really don't know why I made that choice. It's darned good and govers a subject rarely chosen in biographies: appeals judge (non-Supreme Court version.) If Hand was truly the best judge of his time and possibly the twentieth century, who is the most average? Is there one?
The book shies away from making the full case for Hand's greatness. Instead it relies on a lot of outside praise to show he was generally considered the greatest. It's clear, however, that the author think Hand was the greatest, and that his personality his possibly greater than his craftmanship. Gunther's attempt to rehabilitate Hand's late-career oblique criticism of Brown v. Board of Ed., for instance, speaks of an attempt to polish Hand's already sterling reputation, even if Gunther is totally correct.
Indeed, I would be interested in (although probably not enough to buy) a book consisting entirely of Hand's pre-case memos from which Gunther occasionally quotes at length.)
Having picked it back up, I really don't know why I made that choice. It's darned good and govers a subject rarely chosen in biographies: appeals judge (non-Supreme Court version.) If Hand was truly the best judge of his time and possibly the twentieth century, who is the most average? Is there one?
The book shies away from making the full case for Hand's greatness. Instead it relies on a lot of outside praise to show he was generally considered the greatest. It's clear, however, that the author think Hand was the greatest, and that his personality his possibly greater than his craftmanship. Gunther's attempt to rehabilitate Hand's late-career oblique criticism of Brown v. Board of Ed., for instance, speaks of an attempt to polish Hand's already sterling reputation, even if Gunther is totally correct.
Indeed, I would be interested in (although probably not enough to buy) a book consisting entirely of Hand's pre-case memos from which Gunther occasionally quotes at length.)
June 23, 2011
What a marvelous day, that I have lived to regret never having sat down over a Scotch with Judge Hand. A deeply admirable, constantly self-critical, passionately dispassionate man, and one who greatly shaped the progressive reformation in American law, and it could fairly be asserted, thereby shaped the development of the entire country for the second half of the Twentieth Century.
I envy his grandchildren, to have known such a lion, though it may well be they didn't know him well, since he remained a working judge to his last days. Godspeed, true and faithful servant. Any man may rest easy, who has given his all to his fellow men.
I envy his grandchildren, to have known such a lion, though it may well be they didn't know him well, since he remained a working judge to his last days. Godspeed, true and faithful servant. Any man may rest easy, who has given his all to his fellow men.
August 30, 2007
An interesting (and comprehensive, to say the least) biography of a guy who really lived up to his first name.
Want to read
November 8, 2008Can you imagine a better name for a judge? I became fascinated by Judge Hand while I was in law school and have been meaning to read this book ever since.
January 27, 2015
Liked it, but it was long.
Want to read
June 6, 2013Page 213
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews