Learned Hand : The Man and the Judge

New York:: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. Bright, shiny, clean, square, and tight. Sharp corners. The Dust Jacket is NOT price clipped (35.00). No chips. No tears. No owner's name or bookplate. No remainder mark. Pages are fresh and crisp. No underlining. No highlighting. No margin notes. Foreword by Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Illustrated with 16 pages of photographs. List of chapter notes/sources. Bibliography. Index. Bound in the original black boards, with a black cloth spine lettered in shiny gold. The author served as law clerk for Judge Hand (as well as for Chief Justice Earl Warren, in the 1950s). Since 1962 he has been a Professor of Constitutional Law at Stanford. From the Dust Jacket: "A masterful, moving account of the life and work of one of the great judges of the twentieth century, whose work has left a profound mark on our legal, intellectual, and social landscape. The greatest judge never to be appointed to the Supreme Court, Learned Hand is widely considered the peer of Justices Holmes, Brandeis, and Cardozo. In his more than fifty years on the bench, he left an unequaled legacy of lastingly influential writings. This distinctive biography goes well beyond Hand's official work, however, to depict both a complex human being and the times in which he lived. The first to draw on the enormous collection of the judge's private papers, the eminent constitutional scholar Gerald Gunther vividly portrays a public man consumed by private doubts. Gunther's lively account moves from Hand's childhood in a formidable (and anxiety producing) family of lawyers to his years at Harvard as a studious outsider, his frustrating experience in private law practice, his felt inadequacies in marriage, and his work as a federal judge. Throughout his life, Hand believed himself unworthy of the accolades bestowed upon him; self-doubt permeated all aspects of his life. Gunther subtly explores the ties between the modest, uncertain man -- a liberal skeptic who was never 'too sure [he was] right' -- and his public record, and suggests that Hand's personal traits shaped his modest approach to judging: the questioning human being could not help acting that way as a judge. Hand's most enduring legacy is his advocacy of judicial restraint: repeatedly he sounded the dangers of excessive activism in unelected judges. Yet he mustered the courage to support such basic values as freedom of expression -- from his personally costly defense of dissenters amid the hysteria of World War I to his strong affirmation of free speech in his rulings on obscenity and his outspoken attacks on McCarthyism in the 1950s." . First Edition (so stated).. Hard Cover. Fine condition/Near Fine dust jacket.. 8vo. xxi, 820pp..