Book Review: Simeon Eben Baldwin – Lawyer, Social Scientist, Statesman

Abstract

IT gives me special pleasure to review the biography of Simeon E. Baldwin for the Yale Law Journal. This is chiefly because of the character of the man; but it is also because of our long personal association and because of the debt that this writer and the Yale Law School owe to him. In his foreword to the volume, Judge Clark quotes from a tribute to Baldwin published in the Journal at the time of his death, and correctly attributes that quotation to me. Since it is now nearly thirty years since those words were published, few of today's readers of the Journal have seen them. They will bear repeating here: "He was confident, definite and inflexible; and yet his modesty and sense of proportion are strongly witnessed by his unswerving loyalty to this law school, a loyalty expressed even in his last will and testament, in spite of its departure from at least one of his long supported policies. Such a man is the man to live with. He is the man whose memory will be kept green; partly, indeed, because of his ideas and his unusual achievements, but even more largely because of his life and character. The Yale Law School will be proud to continue to build upon the broad and massive foundations laid by this man throughout his long and noble life."