Inspiring Generations

It is difficult to imagine Michigan Law School without Yale Kamisar. He seems as much a part of the place as the Reading Room, the heavy oak doors, and the sounds of the marching band practicing, the steam heaters knocking, and the footsteps on the stone floors. That Michigan students will no longer experience his inspiration and guidance in person is sad, but inevitable. Fortunately, law students everywhere, and the law that they have learned to love, will never escape his influence. The editors of this issue have encouraged us to relate our own experiences with Yale. Mine started long ago. I first encountered Professor Kamisar in 1966, tagging along with my mother to law school when I was just seven years old. “Kamisar ” was one of her professors, in his first year teaching at Michigan after leaving the other U of M – Minnesota. Yale has told me that I sat next to my mother in class, looking on in a very early edition of the casebook that I was later to coauthor. I have absolutely no memory of this experience myself (at most I may have ducked my head inside a classroom once or twice). I remember, though, that my mother told me at the time that Kamisar was “a great man.” Years later, as I first sat down in his class as a law student myself, I had high expectations. But nothing prepared me for how much I would end up learning from him.