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4.2.12
WC: 191694

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As a judge, he saw the enormous disparities between how the wealthy are treated in court and how the poor are mistreated. Although he provided few final answers, he pricked the conscience of a nation, and he goaded the US Supreme Court into action in several cases....

I pointed out that no student can go through a three-year course at any major law school without studying the life work of David Bazelon—and I predict that this will be true well into the next century. The reason for Bazelon’s continuing impact is that his primary role—as he saw it—was to raise enduring questions, not to provide transient, trendy solutions. He saw the role of the courts—especially the intermediate appellate courts, such as the one he served on—as uniquely capable of raising questions and directing them at the Supreme Court, the lower District courts, the legislatures and the executives. Bazelon was at his finest when he threw the ball back at government officials, making them think hard, reconsider and question their own programs and political solutions.

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Over my own career, I have certainly not been known for effusively praising the judiciary. Indeed, part of the reason I have been so critical of so many judges is that I learned at the feet of one who set a tone and provided a model that few can meet. Perhaps in that respect Bazelon has made me too tough a critic of others. I know he would be proud of having provoked hard questions, even about the judiciary that he loves.

Several years after retiring, David Bazelon called to inform me that he had early stage Alzheimer’s, a disease that also afflicted my father. I visited with David all through his illness, often with his closest friend Bill Brennan. We would take David on walks, reminisce with him and tell him stories. I remained his law clerk until he died at age 93.

My clerkship with Justice Arthur Goldberg was, in many ways, more exciting than my clerkship with Judge Bazelon. It was, after all, on the Supreme Court, where nearly every case made headlines. During my Goldberg clerkship, President Kennedy was assassinated, Lee Harvey Oswald was killed, and Lyndon Johnson ascended to the oval office. Many transforming decisions were rendered in areas as wide-ranging and important as desegregation, freedom of the press, the rights of criminal defendants, the law of obscenity, the death penalty and trial by jury. Yet, in a more personal way, my second clerkship was somewhat anticlimactic. I learned far more during my year on the court of appeals than during my year on the High Court, in part because Judge Bazelon was such a remarkable teacher and in part because it was my first exposure to the judiciary in action. This is not to diminish the impact Justice Goldberg had on my life. It too was profound and enduring. The major difference was that Justice Goldberg, who saw me as a protégé, had a specific life plan for me: he wanted me to follow in his footsteps. He saw my professional life unfolding in parallel to his. He wanted me to work in the Kennedy

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