John W. Wade: Friendly Critic and Sensitive Scholar

The teacher could boast only three or four years of maturity over his students; hence, he was vulnerable and was often at-tacked with considerable spirit. From the beginning John Wade faced me with the kind of challenge that can be both the delight and the despair of a beginning law teacher. His characteristic mode of attack by way of imperturbable but relentless prodding will be recalled with admiring pleasure by more than a generation of his own law students. This role of the friendly, reflective skeptic, which is so fundamental a part of the intellectual make-up of John Wade, has been manifest in his every response from the first moment he looked at a law book or listened to a law lecture.