[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 106 (Thursday, July 24, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Page S8107]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                EMERITUS LAW PROFESSOR J. WILLARD HURST

 Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, last month, this Nation lost one 
of its most distinguished scholars when J. Willard Hurst, Emeritus 
Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin, died at his home. He 
was 86.
  Professor Hurst was that wonderful and rare combination of truly 
gifted scholar and great teacher. Indeed, his scholarship was so 
profound, it was responsible for the creation of a new field of study, 
and today Willard Hurst is widely recognized as the Founding Father of 
American legal history.
  Hurst was born in Rockford, IL in 1910. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa 
from Williams College in 1932 and went on to Harvard Law School, where 
he graduated at the top of his class in 1935.
  Hurst worked as a research fellow for Prof. Felix Frankfurter, who 
was later named to the U.S. Supreme Court, and clerked for Supreme 
Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis before heading to Wisconsin, at 
Brandeis's suggestion, where he joined the University of Wisconsin law 
school faculty.
  When Hurst first joined the law school faculty, Dean Lloyd Garrison 
encouraged him to design a program in law and society that investigated 
how the State's legal system and economy related to each other. Hurst 
began that project by studying the law's impact on the State's lumber 
industry, research that would result in his seminal work, ``Law and 
Economic Growth: The Legal History of the Wisconsin Lumber Industry.'' 
That landmark study chronicled the social and economic forces that 
shaped and used the laws of property, contracts, accident compensation, 
and other legal areas to destroy the greatest natural stand of timber 
in the world between 1830 and 1900.
  That work was a classic application of the new scholarly discipline 
of American legal history, a discipline Hurst himself had created--his 
great legacy and a field he dominated directly or indirectly even in 
retirement. As Lawrence M. Friedman of Stanford Law School was quoted 
as saying of legal historians, ``You're either a Hurstian or a revisor 
of Hurst.''
  In a 1990 article in the New York Times about Professor Hurst, David 
Margolick wrote of the state of the study of law when Hurst attended 
law school. ``The law was a self-contained science and the law library 
its laboratory,'' Margolick reported. ``One need not study how law 
actually affected people or how legal institutions evolved; all wisdom 
could be gleaned from appellate decisions. This approach not only gave 
law professors a shot at omniscience but also spared them from having 
to learn other disciplines, set foot in a courtroom or state 
legislature, or even step outside.'' As Margolick added, from the 
moment he arrived at the University of Wisconsin Law School, Professor 
Hurst changed all that.

  University of Wisconsin Emeritus Law Professor Bill Foster said Hurst 
forced people to think of problems separate from the law in an historic 
sense and think about the economic, social and political consequences. 
``He trained us to see around corners.'' As Stanford Professor Hendrik 
Hartog noted, Hurst's interest in the relationship between the law and 
social sciences, especially economics, was really a study of how law 
was experienced by people.
  That approach to studying law found a nurturing home at the 
University of Wisconsin, which was heavily influenced by the so-called 
Wisconsin Idea, the Progressive Era philosophy which encouraged 
scholars to view the entire State as their campus, and which envisioned 
academics as a vital resource for reform-minded government.
  Willard Hurst and Wisconsin were a perfect match. Hurst loved 
Wisconsin. On three occasions he turned down offers to be Dean of the 
Yale Law School. He also turned down the offer of a chair at Harvard. 
Hurst said, ``I guess I was just too pleasure-loving. I was having too 
good a time in Wisconsin.''
  At Wisconsin, Hurst was a prolific writer, contributing to law 
reviews, writing articles, and authoring over a dozen books, including 
``The Law Makers'' (1950), ``Law and Conditions of Freedom'' (1956), 
``Law and Social Process in U.S. History'' (1960), ``Justice Holmes on 
Legal History'' (1964), and ``A Legal History of Money in the United 
States'' (1973).
  Hurst was more than a great original thinker. He was an enormously 
talented and caring teacher. Robben Fleming, former president of the 
University of Michigan and former Chancellor of the University of 
Wisconsin, said that Hurst was the finest teacher he ever had. 
University of Wisconsin Law Professor Stewart Macaulay said Hurst was 
wonderfully generous. ``What Willard would do is go out to lunch with 
someone who was an absolute beginner. He would give you time, make 
incredible suggestions, make contacts for you.''
  Willard Hurst continued to be an academic force in retirement with a 
steady flow of research and writing. As Margolick reported in the 
Times, even in retirement Hurst remained one of the few legal scholars 
whose work could be ``measured in shelf feet--and shelf feet of bona 
fide research rather than cut-and-paste cases and comments.''
  A number of his books became standard texts for law students. In 
fact, I still remember of the five books I was asked to read before I 
entered Harvard Law School, two were written by Willard Hurst.
  As the acknowledged grandfather of American legal history, Hurst's 
legacy is not only a new field of study, but generations of law 
students, and dozens of distinguished scholars. Willard Hurst was a 
giant intellect, but a gentle giant who cared about his students and 
who loved his adopted State. I was privileged to have known 
him.

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