A Passion for Justice

I had the great honor and privilege to serve for one splendid year as a law clerk to Judge J. Skelly Wright.It was an extraordinary experience because Judge Wright was an extraordinary man.In law school, I learned from my professors about holdings, precedents, judicial reasoning, and legal argumentation.From Judge Wright, I learned about justice.Judge Wright had a passion for justice.He believed with every fiber of his being that law is about justice and that the deepest responsibility of the judge is to assure justice for those who are too weak or too despised to attain it for themselves.Judge Wright thought of the law not as a body of infinitely manipulable logical abstractions, but as the living embodiment of our society's highest aspirations.It was his unyielding quest to achieve those aspirations that most singularly distinguished his jurisprudence.When I think back on the many battles Judge Wright fought within the D.C. Circuit in the year I served as his law clerk, three cases in particular come to mind.I mention these, not because they are among Judge Wright's most memorable or influential opinions, but because they touched me personally and because they exemplify his profound commitment to fairness, decency, and human dignity.A central component of Judge Wright's understanding of legal doctrine was his insistence that justice should drive the scope and operation of legal technicalities-and not the reverse.The very day I arrived on the job, in August, 1971, Judge Wright asked me to draft a memorandum in the case of Doe v. McMillan.'He explained that he and Judge MacKinnon disagreed on the result and that Senior Judge Miller, the swing vote on the panel, had reserved judgment.My task was to draft a memorandum that would bring Miller about to "our" point of view.As we sat across his desk, Judge Wright described the case: The House Committee on the District of Columbia had written a lengthy report on the District's public school system.The report included derogatory material about a number of specifically named students.The students and their parents and guardians had sued (under fictitious names to protect their t Harry Kalven, Jr. Professor of Law and Dean, The University of Chicago Law School.I would like to thank Martha Scallon, Judge Wright's devoted secretary for too many years to remember, for her invaluable guidance in the writing of this tribute.I would also like to thank my colleagues Douglas Baird, Larry Kramer