The Keyes of Constitutional Law

Abstract

Before beginning law school in 2001, I knew the names of an embarrassingly small number of judicial decisions. The only case names that I readily possessed were Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Bush v. Gore, and a smattering of other opinions that had managed to escape the narrow confines of the legal community.' I did, however, know the name of at least one relatively obscure opinion, Goldberg v. Kelly, though I would have been at an utter loss if I were asked to identify the holding, the parties, or even the underlying dispute. The sole reason that I had encountered Goldberg v. Kelly is this year's Jorde lecturer, Professor Owen Fiss of Yale Law School.

Some of my closest friends from Oxford University started law school in New Haven, Connecticut, in the fall of 2000, one year before I was set to begin law school up the road in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When I anxiously pressed these friends for the most salient details of their first few weeks of legal education, several of them mentioned how their instructor for Civil Procedure (whatever that was) focused for several weeks in a row on a single case. While this arrangement sounded to me then something like The Paper Chase meets Groundhog Day, they insisted that it was fascinating to refract one opinion through various prisms in order to elucidate foundational points about our legal system. What made a much deeper impression on me than anything about Goldberg v. Kelly, though, was the way that Professor Fiss's students-my buddies-would utter his name in what can only be described as hushed tones. It was plain simply from the way that they almost whispered his name that Owen Fiss inspired deep reverence, even from my most irreverent peers.