Legal Commentary

The New York Times' obituary page today (always the first thing I read in the Times) carries the obituary of Carl Kaysen, an economics professor and former director of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, who also along the way helped negotiate the Limited Test Ban Treaty.  An interesting tidbit from the obit is that Kaysen, who did not have a law degree, served as a law clerk to federal District Court Judge Charles Wyzanski, who wanted an economist's advice in an important antitrust case.  Not one to waste his time, Kaysen also got a book out of the case.    

I'm not sure how many non-law school graduates have served as law clerks, and would love to hear other names if they exist.  I'm not sure whether this is good news for law students, since they now need not think of graduating as a prerequisite to the job (although I don't know if the relevant statutes have since changed, and I suspect the failure to graduate would affect one's base salary), or bad news, as judges realize that in a glutted and competitive market for law clerks they can always steal a jump on their colleagues by going outside the law schools altogether.  I have long thought that serious originalist judges, who might be slightly hampered by a less than deep knowledge of history, ought to reserve at least one of their spots for a specialist in the relevant periods of American history who is untainted by time in law school, in case the judge accidentally and unintentionally reads history in a presentist and outcome-oriented way; maybe this would be a good time for them to get started.