My Friend, Charles Reich

Abstract

Many of you have come to love Charles through reading his works, and that is both admirable and understandable. I have a different perspective. I came to know and love Charlie before he wrote what you all will talk about, and I loved his works not only in themselves and for their scholarly value, but also and as much as manifestations of the person Charlie was, the person I knew. So let me this evening tell you some stories about him and perhaps, in that indirect way, shed some lights on his writing.

Now, how did I get to know Charlie? I was clerking for Justice Black, and it was a hard year for Black because he won all the cases he didn't care about - economic cases, five to four - and he lost all the cases he cared about - the civil rights and civil liberties cases, five to four - because there were four and Tom Clark, who always voted for the government. Clark would be on Black's side of the economic cases and on the other side on the others. And that was frustrating to the judge, because he liked to win. Unlike most judges, he liked to win.

And on Friday, Black wanted to get these things off his mind and play bridge. He loved bridge and loved tennis. He would never play tennis with me - I wasn't good enough. But he liked to play bridge, and the bridge foursome was a lawyer in Washington who was a very good bridge player, Charlie Reich, and me. And we wanted the judge to win, because he wanted to win, and we wanted him to win. But had we tried to make him win, he would've seen through it, and it would've been a disaster.

So what happened was that Charlie said, quite truly, "I can't be the judge's partner, because emotionally that just is something I can't do." And that was clearly true. So one of us, either the lawyer or I, would be the judge's partner, and the other would be Charlie's partner. Well, Charlie's brilliant, but you cannot be his partner in a thing like bridge. So with everybody doing their very best, the judge would win all the time, or almost all the time. That's how I got to know him.