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4.2.12 WC: 191694 When I told Bazelon about the justice quote from the Torah, he asked me why the word justice was repeated. Wouldn’t it have been enough to say “justice you must actively chase after.” “Why ‘justice, justice.”” No word, or even syllable of the Torah is supposed to be redundant. Every one has a meaning. I told Judge Bazelon that the rabbis had a field day providing interpretation to the repeat of justice. My favorite, the one I had proposed in my Bar Mitzvah speech, was that the first “tzedek” meant legal justice, while the second meant compassionate justice. Judge Bazelon corrected me: “Compassion must come before the law. The first means compassionate justice, the second legal justice.” Whichever came first in Judge Bazelon’s court, every decision that he wrote or joined combined elements of both. His compassion wasn’t always appreciated, even by its objects. Judge Bazelon once showed me a letter he received from his most famous defendant, a man named Monte Durham. Durham was the defendant in the case in which Bazelon announced his innovative approach to the insanity defense in the form of a new tule called “The Durham Rule” that declared a person to be legally insane, and thus not guilty, if his crime was “the product” of a mental disease or defect. This controversial rule revolutionized the relationship between law and psychiatry. The letter from Monte Durham complained about the rule bearing his name. “Now everyone calls me “Durham the Nutcase.’” He noted that when doctors discover a new disease, they name it after themselves and not after the patient. He wondered why the new rule wasn’t called “The Bazelon Rule” instead of the “Durham Rule!” Bazelon apologized to Durham and noted that if judges could name new rules after themselves there would be too many new rules. Judge Bazelon and I were a match made, if not in heaven, at least in legal nirvana. I learned a lot from him and even taught him a little. We remained lifelong friends, though the year of clerking was more like hell than heaven, at least as regards to working conditions. Bazelon was never satisfied. He never told me that a draft opinion or article was good. It always needed to be “made better.” “It’s getting there” or “it’s close,” was the highest compliment he ever paid. But when it was done and published, and colleagues complimented him on the finished product, he would always give me credit. But never to my face. I always had to hear it from others. He was beyond a perfectionist. He knew his opinions would be read by generations of law students, professors, lower court judges and assorted critics. He was on a never-ending mission, and nothing was ever good enough. Even if it was good enough to publish or deliver because of artificial deadlines, it was never quite good enough for David Bazelon. But the long hours, demanding boss and difficult working conditions were well worth it. Law clerks who endured this trial by fire went on to great careers. Former Bazelon clerks include the deans of Harvard and Yale Law Schools, the President of New York University, the former Chancellor of the New York City school system, a prominent reform rabbi, numerous law professors, lawyers and business and political leaders. He influenced us all, and his influence continues in the work that many still do. As Peter Strauss, a law professor at Columbia once aptly characterized the relationship between Judge Bazelon and his clerks: “He the pebble, we the ripples.” The primary job of the law clerk related to the appellate cases that came before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In the years I was a clerk, that court served not only as a federal appellate court, but also as the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, a reasonably sized city with a racially mixed population and a relatively high violent crime rate. Many of our cases involved very high level appeals relating to federal administrative 53 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017140