Brief Lives

Owen Fiss has led an enviable life. The Sterling Professor Emeritus at Yale Law School is a revered teacher; author of dozens of books and articles on procedure, constitutional law, and legal theory; and one of the most cited legal scholars of all time. Devotion to Brown v. Board of Education, the liberalism it fostered, and the Warren Court pervade Fiss's life as a law clerk, lawyer, and professor. They also pervade his writings, even his magisterial Holmes Devise volume on the Fuller Court.

In Pillars of Justice: Lawyers and the Liberal Tradition, a book written "to inspire and instruct" the young, Fiss introduces us to his legal liberalism, Yale, and heroes - Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan, John Doar, Burke Marshall, Harry Kalven, Eugene Rostow, Arthur Leff, Catharine MacKinnon, Joseph Goldstein, Robert Cover, Morton Horwitz, Carlos Nino, and Aharon Barak.