Saturday
Let me tell you about Professor Harry H. Wellington, who died on
August 8, this year, 2011, of a brain tumor, and I only learned
about it last night when my wife with tears in her eyes brought me
a notice about his memorial service from Yale Law School. He was a
great teacher.
I first entered Yale Law School in the fall of 1966. My
contracts teacher then was a heavy-set man with a thick German
accent. He took delight — really great delight — in mocking and
belittling his students, especially his very few female students. I
did not miss him when I left Yale after a couple of months to
recuperate from colitis and some wild malpractice by physicians at
the Yale health service.
I worked as an economist and a writer for a year, and then
came back to Yale. My contracts teacher was exactly that — a
teacher. Not a tormentor. Not a mocker. A teacher. His name was
Harry Wellington.
He taught us contracts with a kindly, understanding air,
confident in his knowledge of the subject and his ability to get us
new kids to understand. He patiently explained to us what it meant
to have an agreement that the law would enforce. He explained when
a contract became actionable — something about “detrimental
reliance” — and he only mocked me once, when I suggested that a
plaintiff might ask for exemplary damages upon a particularly
egregious breach.
“Exemplary damages in a contracts case,” said Professor
Wellington. “I think you have that idea all to
yourself.”
He was so much a gentleman that years later, he wrote to
me that now exemplary damages were a basic part of contract law.
(Frankly, I don’t know if it’s true or not.)
I do not recall a single example of his making female
students cry, which had been a specialty of his Germanic
predecessor.
His was a relaxed, genuinely educational way of teaching,
without the pointless “Socratic dialogue” hiding of the ball that
marked the teasing way of teaching of so many law teachers in that
day.
When class ended, Prof. Wellington and I stayed friends. I
can still recall very well his office at the top of the first
flight of stairs up towards the hated library. He was always
available, with his pipe — and sometimes a wicked cigarette —
burning. And always with a smile. He would talk about anything. He
particularly smiled when I brought my beautiful wife, Alexandra,
still my wife these many years later. He had a twinkle in his eye
when he talked to her.
We often talked about the amazing mortality rate of Yale
Law professors. “A lot of us think there’s cancer in the walls
here,” he once said. It struck me as funny, since he was smoking as
he said it.
In my second year, I took Labor Law from Prof. Wellington.
Once again, he was explainer, educator, teacher — not tormentor. I
actually considered going into that field.
In that same second year, when I could not find a law firm
job in New York, which I wanted for a reason I cannot even vaguely
recall, Prof. Wellington got me a job at a medium-sized,
well-regarded Wall Street firm called Reavis & McGrath. I hated
it. Endless yelling and screaming and cursing and a high-tension
atmosphere that was utterly wrong for me. If there is a word
stronger than “hate,” that’s how I felt about it. I think my
attitude showed through, and I am laid low to this day that I
probably brought reproach upon this fine Harry Wellington who got
me the job. However, I owe Prof. Wellington and Reavis &
McGrath for making me sure I did not ever want to work in private
law practice.
I think at this point I should say something else about
Harry Wellington. He was incredibly handsome. Movie star handsome.
Matinee idol handsome. With his pipe, and his tweed jacket, just a
dream of what an Ivy League professor should look like. He had a
beautiful wife, Sheila, and we all looked at them as the couple we
would like to be when we were “old.” I calculate that they were
about 43 at the time.
Time passed. Prof. Wellington became Dean of the law
school and did a fine job. He published major articles and books on
law and legal reasoning. Along with Bob Bork and the late Alex
Bickel, he made Yale a synonym for careful thought processes that
lined up cases by “neutral principles” and sought to see if courts
were following those principles.
But it was as teacher that he shines in my memory. When I
think of great teachers, I think of Harry Wellington, Bob Bork,
Larry Simon.
Yes, I know he was a stellar scholar and administrator at Yale
and at New York Law School.
Still, I saw him as teacher: getting his students to think
and reason and write with his love of them and of the law, and not
fear of the lash of sarcasm. That was new forty years or more ago,
and he was a pioneer in the kindly — and vastly more effective —
teaching of law.
Not long ago, when I wrote a column for the New York
Times, Harry Wellington sent me fan mail about something I had
written. It brought tears to my eyes that he remembered me and was
still so full of kindness and regard, just as it brings tears to my
eyes to think that he is no longer with us. He was a superb teacher
and a great friend to his students and to the law, and a shining,
dashingly handsome example of Yale Law School at its best — which
is awfully good. We who knew him and had him teach us were blessed.
To have him as both friend and teacher was to be doubly blessed.
His loss is terrible.
