Wesley A. Sturges: In Memoriam

Abstract

Some of us may wonder whether or not we shall live on after we pass. But we should not so wonder about Dean Sturges. Dean Sturges excelled at a high calling which offers to those gifted enough to meet its challenges an extraordinary opportunity to live on after death: the teaching of the young. He aimed to train leaders of men. He often remarked that lawyers are the policy-makers of the world and that a function of a school of law was to equip its students for policy-making. His techniques developed that self-reliance so necessary to a man in the lonely hours of deciding a high-level question of policy. That he succeeded in his aim is well attested: his students sit on the Supreme Court of the United States; in Governors' mansions; in the Congress of the United States; in the ranking chairs at the Justice Department, the Treasury Department, the State Department, the Department of Defense; as high counsel to corporations and to labor unions; as partners in the great law firms of America; and in the crowded loneliness of court rooms all over America.