More Than What Courts Do: Jurisprudence, Decision, and Dignity-In Brief Encounters and Global Affairs

The same, perhaps, may be said of jurisprudence. If so, then, like Spinoza, W. Michael Reisman, this conference's honoree, falls clearly into the latter category. His jurisprudence informs his work and his life-as a scholar, teacher, practitioner, friend, and public citizen. Having been privileged to know or work with him in most of these capacities, I have often been struck by how the methods and injunctions of the New Haven School shape his personal, no less than professional, character traits.

He exhibits an acute sensitivity to context, cultivates a studied habit of disengaging from biases, and always reflects on arguments before replying: he responds rather than reacts. Not coincidentally, the New Haven School encourages these traits, and no living scholar or practitioner is identified more closely with it than Reisman. Below, beyond describing some precepts of the School, I want to focus on a few areas in which Reisman made signature contributions to its jurisprudence of realistic idealism.