It is a pleasure to recommend you for anything you desire....While Professor Sweeney has not shown me the draft outline to which you refer, I am confident the undertaking will be a very creditable one, if only because it is yours. You may rest assured that, to the extent you desire my informal comments and advice at any stage, you need only arrange to see me and I shall be glad to evince the hearty interest that I feel.
Edmond Cahn to my dad in a letter from New York University Law School, 14th March 1960...
At the time in 1959 Cahn had already declined being my dad's advisor, as Cahn said his health was being pushed to the limits in his efforts of converting his seminars to books, etc. but Professor Cahn still was very complimentary and considerate:
"I am particularly pleased by the request because there is no doctoral candidate during my years of teaching whom I should prefer to supervise."
My dad took the coursework for his Ph.D. in law in Sweden - William J. Hempel '58. (LL.M. '59) at NYU Law....he had to return back to the U.S. to write his thesis but apparently his mother-in-law had visited Sweden and all hell broke loose, ending in divorce via the mother-in-law once back in the U.S. hahaha.
Edmond Cahn wrote kind words to encourage my dad's work after my dad's divorce to his first wife but Cahn himself was too overwhelmed in work to take on my dad's advising project.
"Meanwhile, be assured that I remain deeply interested in your welfare and progress."
13th December, 1960.
Everyone said my dad's book was too ambitious and my dad was translating Swedish legal articles at the time. I didn't realize my Dad had taken "advanced Swedish" in Stockholm and my dad had done well - achieving an A or A-minus in his Swedish classes! Considering my grandfather gave a sermon in Swedish...Professor Cahn asked me dad to help translate some legal work of another....
After an LL.M. (Master of Laws), the next step for further academic study is typically a doctoral degree like the Doctor of Juridical Science...A Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D. or J.S.D.) is a terminal research doctorate in law, equivalent to a Ph.D., designed for those who want to become legal scholars or academics
Professor Cahn mentions...
"since I have soon to undergo a minor operation...."
May 1960.... was that in relation to what followed just four years later?
EDMOND CAHN, 58, A JURIST, IS DEAD; Professor at N.Y.U. Was a Noted Legal Philosopher
[His] greatest wish … was for a knowledge of justice and an understanding heart
It is easy to be depressed about the state of law these days. As the voters have become increasingly fearful and hateful, legislators and judges have made our law less generous and honorable. The death penalty has been reintroduced and corners have been cut in procedural protections to speed it along. The honorable basis of the exclusionary rule—the unwillingness of judges to countenance wrong-doing—has been abandoned. Legal aid for the poor has been cut back. The steam has gone out of civil rights enforcement. There no longer seems to be a vision among lawyers that law can be a source of nourishment for society. The positivist vision of law—the will of the strong—dominates legal thinking. Even the liberals, “burnt-out” and cynical in the light of legal realism, do not think of law as special.
Field, Edmond Cahn, 40 N.Y.U. L. REV.210 (1965). This volume of the New York
University Law Review contained seventy pages of memorium to Edmond Cahn, as well as a
bibliography of his writings. [hereinaftercited as Memorium.] Judge Field was repeating a
biblical story about King Solomon and ascribing to Cahn, Solomon's greatest wish.
Edmond Cahn's Sense of Injustice: A Contemporary Reintroduction
Cahn agreed,with much allowance for criticism of the particular laws of any age, with "Hebraic and Helenic thinkers that law shall become a lamp to the feet and a light to the path." E. CAHN, THE SENSE OF INJUSTICE: AN ANTHROPOCENTRIC VIEW OF LAW, 109 (1949) [hereinafter cited as SENSE OF INJUSTICE]. Those persons who seem closest to Cahn in this attitude today are, again to refer to Professor Gordon's insights, the left-wing CLS lawyers [Critical Legal Studies (CLS), which has roots in left-wing political thought] and academics, many of whom are
dedicated to "developing the utopian norms expressed in law." Letters, supranote 6, at 4. The difference between Cahn and CLS people, to put a complex matter in a crude way, is that for Cahn, law itself rebels against its use for oppression. "[L]aw without justice is quite unthinkable." SENSE OF INJUSTICE,supra, at 28....
To Cahn, the atrocities of World War II had undermined pre-war understandings
of law and seemed to many to leave no alternative but power as the basis of law. Cahn criticized this world-view as "the cult of force,"19 and set out to do battle, arguing instead that justice is the basis of law...
Cahn doubted there could be "a universal and immutable formula"26 to govern the relationships of human beings. Still, Cahn did not so much criticize natural law as set it aside as a hypothesis that would make little difference compared to his formulation of the sense of injustice....
It was Hobbes' view of the nature of man, however, that Cahn says ultimately caused natural law to be replaced by the acceptance of power as the substance of legality. Hobbes found in man original viciousness whereas natural law had posited virtue.29 This view of man led Hobbes to emphasize the necessity of power for restraint. Once mere power became the accepted basis of law, the task of legal theory became simply to analyze the formal qualities of positive law. At this point Cahn offers some criticism of "law qua command."30 ..........
Cahn wanted "natural justice" without the natural law tradition. He did not want static formulations, but something else. Cahn tried to ground justice in law in human experience and observation of human affairs.32
"Through a mysterious and magical empathy or imaginative interchange,each projects himself into the shoes of the other, not in pity or compassion merely, but in the vigor of self-defense" Edmond Cahn
Justice, Power and Law
philosophers participate freely in the … found the true substance of justice.58 The eq here is that of …Save
Freedom, Order and Law
down the centuries, make … freedom, and we have seen how legal technique, like a metronome, …Save
The Constitution and Edmond Cahn
67, at 557-58. In earlier years at least … , a devoted supporter of New York University, a valued …Save
Jurisprudence
has been retained, we find … We come thus to the very bedrock of Jerome Frank's philosophy…Save
Jurisprudence
… the death of Karl N. Llewellyn, our subject was deprived of one of its best-known and most …Save
Legal Philosophy from Plato to Hegel
Professor de Bustamante's recent … The lawyer w not make himself acquainted with the ideas in …Save
Edmond Cahn: A Philosopher for Democratic Man
demonstrates Edmond Cahn's perception that the … NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW …Save
A Lawyer looks at Religion
philosophy, we should be able to cope … Though, in England, after endless efforts the death penalty
The lawyer as scientist and scoundrel: Reflections on Francis Bacon's Quadricentennial
full of … Like many another philosophy teacher in our time, Professor Reichenbach has grown …
Law in the consumer perspective
… All we can say with certainty is that a lawyer who did not consider "singular motives, like the …
No comments:
Post a Comment