Tribute to Joseph Goldstein

About forty-five years ago, in my second year as a student at the Yale Law School, an extraordinary group of new faculty members arrived. They included Alexander Bickel, Abe Goldstein, Leon Lipson, Ellen Peters, Harry Wellington, and Joe Goldstein. Together with those who had preceded them by a year, like Louis Pollak and Quinton Johnstone, there were fourteen or so new arrivals. I believed then, and continue to think now, that no law school has ever had so remarkable an influx and so magnificent a burst of creative energy.

The new kids-for most were very young-were brilliant, testy, different from each other and from the preexisting Yale Law School faculty. And yet they fit right in, with a school that already had more than its share of academic superstars, and with that special atmosphere that defined the Yale Law School then, as it does today.