William W. Bishop, Jr.: A Law Teacher Whose Inward Happiness was Reflected in his Relations with Students and Colleagues

Bill Bishop's students and colleagues at Michigan showed their love and respect for him, which I, as a contemporary in age, shared. Like my father, Charles Cheney Hyde, I had associations with Bishop while lecturing there. Through these associations I developed my own interest in the Law School and its students. His colleague, Eric Stein, has emphasized the impact of his casebook and teaching.

He refers to Bishop's "historical perspective and traditional systematic presentation, which formed the background for consideration of perpetual change," which Bishop saw and documented. In the Foreword to the Proceedings of a 1955 Summer Institute on International and Comparative Law, Bishop saw the conference as providing a learning process, predicting the need for background in considering "the rapidly moving and at times chaotic developments in the fields of high seas, fisheries, the continental shelf and territorial waters."