Yale Kamisar the Teacher

I first heard Yale Kamisar's name in the spring of 1977 while deciding where to go to law school. The then Dean of Admissions at Michigan suggested I call a graduate practicing law near me in upstate New York. The graduate eloquently endorsed Michigan. But what impressed me most was his statement, "When you go to Michigan you must be sure to take a course from a professor named Yale Kamisar.

That course changed the way I thought about law. Every day we'd go to class and talk about interesting cases and I was always confused. But at the very end of the course, when I was studying for exams, I figured it out. Professor Kamisar thought all those cases were wrongly decided!" Others who have studied with Yale might wonder why it took that student until the end of the course to understand what Yale was saying.

I suspect he was exaggerating a little bit for the benefit of a prospective student. In any event, it worked. The statement stayed with me when I arrived in Ann Arbor.