Two memories stand out about my brief foray at Duke University
Law School in the early 1960s. One occurred when I was made my
class’s representative to plan the dedication of the new law school
building on campus. It was an elaborate ceremony to be led by no
less than Chief Justice Earl Warren and joined by all the political
elite among the school’s alumni—except for our highest-achieving
graduate, former Vice President Richard Nixon.
When I expressed curiosity about the omission, I was briskly shushed by the dean and told in no uncertain terms that Nixon would never be allowed back on the Duke campus for reasons that were never fully explained. And so it would be. Even the offer of his presidential library was not enough to expunge whatever offense Nixon had committed at Duke.
The other memory is more pleasant. Finding myself unable to focus on torts and property in fee simple absolute, I took to wandering through the school until I came on a suite of offices for something called the World Rule of Law Center.
There I met Arthur Larson, the center’s founding director. Larson had been known as “the brains of the Eisenhower administration” which he had served as undersecretary of labor, head of the U.S. Information Agency and, lastly, as Ike’s chief speechwriter. He had resigned in 1959 to return to teaching and to create the center to foster this vague concept called the World Rule of Law.
Taking time to give a patient tutorial to an obvious ignoramus, Larson explained to me that the concept was the latest hot idea of Cold War strategy. Fostering a world standard of justice based on the case-precedent laws of England and the United States would be crucial to establishing true democracies among less developed nations and would prove a bulwark against the arbitrary rule of despots— Communists, Fascists, monarchs. He pointed to a declaration signed in Delhi two years earlier when jurists from 53 nations endorsed the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and vowed to work to clarify a common rule of law. It was the coming thing.
Read more: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/10/31/whose-rule-of-law
When I expressed curiosity about the omission, I was briskly shushed by the dean and told in no uncertain terms that Nixon would never be allowed back on the Duke campus for reasons that were never fully explained. And so it would be. Even the offer of his presidential library was not enough to expunge whatever offense Nixon had committed at Duke.
The other memory is more pleasant. Finding myself unable to focus on torts and property in fee simple absolute, I took to wandering through the school until I came on a suite of offices for something called the World Rule of Law Center.
There I met Arthur Larson, the center’s founding director. Larson had been known as “the brains of the Eisenhower administration” which he had served as undersecretary of labor, head of the U.S. Information Agency and, lastly, as Ike’s chief speechwriter. He had resigned in 1959 to return to teaching and to create the center to foster this vague concept called the World Rule of Law.
Taking time to give a patient tutorial to an obvious ignoramus, Larson explained to me that the concept was the latest hot idea of Cold War strategy. Fostering a world standard of justice based on the case-precedent laws of England and the United States would be crucial to establishing true democracies among less developed nations and would prove a bulwark against the arbitrary rule of despots— Communists, Fascists, monarchs. He pointed to a declaration signed in Delhi two years earlier when jurists from 53 nations endorsed the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and vowed to work to clarify a common rule of law. It was the coming thing.
Read more: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/10/31/whose-rule-of-law
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