Samuel Williston

Abstract

SAMUEL Williston was to me like an older brother, and, although for some years no word has come to me from him, his death leaves me saddened and bereft. This will be a personal tribute from a full heart. Never actually in his classroom, except once as a visitor at his opening lecture in October, fifty-five years ago, he was nevertheless my chief teacher in the law of Contracts. As a beginning instructor in that subject at Yale, sixty years ago, it was to his articles and his edition of Pollock that I had to go for instruction. When, in 1906, he published his casebook in two volumes, I adopted it at once as the subject of class discussion, four times a week through the year. It so remained until my own casebook was published thirteen years later.