Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge

by Gerald Gunther

Book Overview

Billings Learned Hand was one of the most influential judges in America. In Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge, Gerald Gunther provides a complete and intimate account of the professional and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 039458807X
• ISBN13: 9780394588070
• Release Date: April 1994
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 818 Pages
• Weight: 3.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.0" x 6.7" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

The best judicial biography written

Learned Hand was in many ways a great man. A dedicated judge, the gently forgiving husband of a straying wife, a kind and thoughtful person, brilliantly intelligent and clear-thinking - and yet, in the end, almost unknowable. Gunther's biography shines a light on every aspect of the judge's work and personality, including the mystery at his inner core. Hand really wasn't like other people, and Gunther, who knew him personally, captures that. Gunther's prose is remarkably clear and direct. Another reviewer's remarks about his political bias are just mystifying to me. I don't think Hand's jurisprudence can be classified as either liberal or conservative, and I didn't come away with any sense of Gunther's politics. Frankfurter, the New Dealer, is not depicted as a villain, but rather as one of Hand's closest friends, and an extremely interesting person in his own right. Judicial biographies are inherently difficult to write, because the subjects' lives tend to be externally uneventful. (Hand virtually never left his native New York state.) Also, old cases are dull unless you really get into them, but to do so requires long digressions from the biographical narrative. This is the only judicial biography I've read that overcomes both problems. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Brillant Jurist - An icon for 20th Century Law.

This biography is perhaps the best thing that has happened in law in the last thirty years. There is finally an account of a Jurist whose brilliant legal analyses and commitment to judicial process is made available for the legally interested. In a society which has come to view the legal profession as comprised of those who are still evolving out of the primordial sludge, Justice Hand was a man of imeccable values whose acute intellectual approach to law is viewed, in retrospect by this writer, as heroic. Professor Gunther's delivery is no less a work of poetry than Judge Hand's judicial opinions.

A biographical sketch worthy of its complex subject

An absorbing biography. This portrait of Learned Hand is as rich in detail and as dynamic in thought and scope as was the Judge himself. This book is written in style which is evocative and accessible. Gunther's review of the various legal doctrines is understandable without pandering. Woven throughout the book is a look at a very exposed human being. Here is a man with all the phobias and moroses of all men, yet a mind second to none. Tired of flat, one dimensional looks at individuals you wouldn't care about had you met them personally? Read this book. It will challenge and ultimately inspire you that there are books worth reading and people worth emulating.