I found this letter [uploaded here](https://www.studocu.com/ph/document/university-of-san-agustin/ethics/advice-to-a-young-man-interested-in-going-into-law/37348196), after it was referenced [in a ceremony](https://www.cschs.org/history/california-supreme-court-justices/stanley-mosk/) by Justice Stanley Mosk’s son, honoring the late Justice. I wrote about more quotes from that ceremony here.

> My dear Paul:
>
> No one can be a truly competent lawyer unless he is a cultivated man. If I were you, I would forget about any technical preparation for the law. The best way to prepare for the law is to be a well-read person.
>
> Thus, alone can one acquire the capacity to use the English language on paper and in speech and with the habits of clear thinking that, only a truly liberal education can give. No less important for a lawyer is the cultivation of the imaginative faculties by reading poetry, seeing great paintings, in the original or in easily available reproductions, and listening to great music. Stock your mind with the deposit of much good reading, widen and deepen your feelings by experiencing vicariously as much as possible the wonderful mysteries of the universe, and forget about your future career. With good wishes,
>
> Sincerely yours,
>
> [Signed] Felix Frankfurter
>
> M. Paul Claussen, Jr


Felix Frankfurter’s Letter of Advice to a Young Person Interested in Going into the Law

I read a few opinions by Justice Mosk this week, which had made me curious to learn more 
about who he was, what he did, and how he lived.

I came across [this wonderful recorded meeting](https://www.cschs.org/history/california-supreme-court-justices/stanley-mosk/) of the Justices of the California Supreme Court to honor Justice Mosk after he passed away. His son, his wife, and various co-workers spoke about Mosk’s life, judicial philosophy, and who he was.

I was captivated by it all. Here are some highlights:

I loved this quote that Mosk’s son shared:

> Felix Frankfurter once wrote to a young boy interested in the law that, “No one can be a truly competent lawyer unless he is a cultivated man.” He went on, “Stock your mind with the deposit of much good reading. Widen and deepen your feelings by experiencing vicariously as much as possible the wonderful mysteries of the universe. . . .” Stanley Mosk, throughout his life, did what Mr. Justice Frankfurter recommended.

If I can aspire to anything in my legal career, I hope I can stock my “mind with the deposit of much good reading” and “widen and deepen [my] feelings by experiencing vicariously as much as possible he wonderful mysteries of the universe.” [Read Frankfurter’s full letter here](https://dltnio.pika.page/posts/felix-frankfurters-letter-of-advice-to-a-young-person-interested-in-going-into-the-law).

And this classic from George Bernard Shaw:

> As George Bernard Shaw wrote: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Mosk’s eminent, learned mind is evident from this anecdote:

> We [Mosk, Bernie Witkin, and Joseph Cotchett] had met at about 11:30 and the three of us went to lunch. We always laughed because Bernie just used to tell jokes until you couldn’t stop him. We got on the subject of the United States Supreme Court in the 1930’s and the court-packing plan of Franklin Delano Roosevelt; and at this point Stanley Mosk took over and for the next hour recited every single opinion with full citation, almost every page, I’m sure, and the facts about the cases that reversed Roosevelt’s policies in the ‘30s. As he went on and on, I was just in awe. And the most important aspect of it was Bernie sat there without saying a word, which was truly remarkable for Bernie Witkin. Justice Mosk recited every piece of legislation and every case that dealt with it. When it was all over, Bernie Witkin looked over at him and said, “Stanley, do you know the Rule in Shelley’s Case?” I’m pleased to tell you, he said yes and recited it! Thank you very much.

And this, from Mosk’s research attorney, Dennis Peter Maio:

> He gave as much attention to the small issues as to the great, for he believed and he acted on the belief that the law was a practical human creation, a mechanism that enabled all sorts of people with all sorts of values and goals to make communal life a going concern, a successful going concern. He was pragmatic, as others have said. But he was pragmatic out of principle. Many of Justice Mosk’s deeds and words at the court were similarly undramatic. To us on his staff, he was a quiet man, even though he had much to say. He was not at all self-important, even though he played a role that was prominent. He generally asked us for nothing, except whatever assistance we might be able to furnish, as in each case he attempted to get to the right result. Many a time, he got to a right result that was not to his liking — every time when it involved affirmance of a judgment of death, for, as all know, he was personally opposed to capital punishment. He would not change the result. Rather, he would pause, grimace, and say a word or two and then pass on to the next matter.
> 
> Once, years ago, in a case I still remember clearly, I recommended reversal of a judgment of death. He nonetheless rejected my recommendation, because the result, as I soon had to admit, was wrong. He knew what he liked and what he did not. But he believed that his job was to try to do what was right. I cannot say that he ever failed.
> 
> As I close, let me recall a particular memory of Justice Mosk, or rather a particular group of memories. Nine times in the course of the past decade, the moment for execution of a judgment of death would approach. Nine times, he would be found in his chambers, reviewing a last-minute habeas corpus petition if one had been filed, doing other work if one had not. Nine times, as the appointed hour drew near, he would assemble with other members of the court. Nine times, after what had to be done was done, he would leave and make his way home. Never did he say more than a few words. His face, however, always revealed a sad recognition that he would not see this ritual end in his lifetime. More important, his presence always demonstrated a full and open commitment to the law, not only when it guided him where he would go, but also, and perhaps especially, when it took him where he would not.

And, finally, his wife shares a uniquely personal portrait of the late Justice:

> In the early morning I would often hear Stanley jogging or two-stepping to his own tune. When he saw me watching him exercise, he would call out: “Kiddo, I’m hungry!” I took this as a signal to prepare breakfast. He loved food–any kind of food–and was very tolerant of my limited cooking skills: Even when I burned his toast and eggs, he would exclaim, “Delicious! What a meal!”
> 
> Stanley was always careful about his appearance–not because of vanity, but because he respected his position in public life. When he was ready to go to work each day–always well groomed and wearing a nice suit–he would turn around for my inspection, and I would say: “Okay. Okay. Today you’re even more beautiful than I am.” Then his face would break into a radiant smile and he would leave the house with his usual parting remark: “Well, I’m off to make a living for us.”

What kept Justice Mosk going for 37 years? Simple. “He loved the law.”

> What drove Stanley to do what he did so brilliantly, day after day, case after case, for 37 years? A short time before his passing, when we were in Los Angeles for a court session, he came home after a tiring day on the bench and mused how much he loved the law–but told me it would be the last session he would attend.

I’m excited to continue reading cases penned by Mosk, and proud to be living in a State that recognized Mosk’s genius, and put him where he needed to be.

Justice Stanley Mosk


When you're a huge nerd like me, you not only read court opinions for school, but you also get really excited to read those court opinions when it's written by a judge that you like to read. There are a few judges I *love* to read, even if I don't agree with everything they write. Judge Posner from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals is one of those. The latest opinion we read from him [opens with](https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/17/209/566491/), "Richard Welge, forty-something but young in spirit, loves to sprinkle peanuts on his ice cream sundaes." And continues later:

> Even so, the defendants point out, it is always possible that the jar was damaged while it was sitting unattended on the top of the refrigerator, in which event they are not responsible. Only if it had been securely under lock and key when not being used could the plaintiff and Karen Godfrey be certain that nothing happened to damage it after she brought it home. That is true--there are no metaphysical certainties--but it leads nowhere. Elves may have played ninepins with the jar of peanuts while Welge and Godfrey were sleeping; but elves could remove a jar of peanuts from a locked cupboard. The plaintiff in a products liability suit is not required to exclude every possibility, however fantastic or remote, that the defect which led to the accident was caused by someone other than one of the defendants.

I mean, come on. Inject this into my veins.

Another fascinating thing about reading opinions while studying how one area of law has developed is seeing how judge's concurring and dissenting opinions in one case end up being the rationale for the majority in a later case. [Justice William Brennan ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Brennan_Jr.) of the Supreme Court was notorious for this in personal jurisdiction cases.

Here's a great example from my readings this week.

We're learning about strict products liability law, and the big crux of this area of tort law is that manufacturers and distributers don't have to be negligent (i.e. do anything "wrong" necessarily) for someone to recover against them. They are held strictly liable.

In 1944, strict products liability wasn't really a thing, but a justice on the California Supreme Court *really* wanted it to be a thing. In *Escola v. Coco Cola Bottling Co.*, [Justice Rodger Traynor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_J._Traynor) wrote a concurring opinion advocating for strict products liability. He wrote:

> In my opinion, it should now be recognized that a manufacturer incurs an absolute liability when an article that he has placed on the market, knowing that it is to be used without inspection, proves to have a defect that causes injury to human beings.

And here Justice Traynor is again in 1963, almost *twenty years later*, writing the same thing in the majority opinion in *Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc.*, thereby creating strict products liability for tort actions in California:

> A manufacturer is strictly liable in tort when an article he places on the market, knowing that it is to be used without inspection for defects, proves to have a defect that causes injury to a human being.

And just like that, strict products liability is birthed into existence. I love finding stuff like this and connecting the dots.

Concurring opinions

After a run this morning, my friend told me about Linkin Park’s new song, “[Heavy is the Crown](https://genius.com/Linkin-park-heavy-is-the-crown-lyrics).” Apparently they’re making a comeback? I never really got into them, so I don’t know.

But.

I listened to the song on the way home. It gave me a bit of a headache (why are they yelling so much?) but the lyrics were great.

> This is what you asked for, heavy is the crown /
> Fire in the sunrise, ashes rainin' down /
> Try to hold it in, but it keeps bleedin' out /
> This is what you asked for, heavy is the / 
> Heavy is the crown

[No one really seems to know](https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkinPark/comments/1fogrhh/what_do_you_think_the_lyrics_to_heavy_is_the/) exactly what the lyrics are referring to. Some say it’s a bash on critics saying the band was over, others say it’s a stab at politicians: “I think it's aimed much more at world leaders in general, politicians playing the politics 'game'. This is what you asked for, you're in a position of power, so deal with all the shit. It's not nice, heavy is the crown, but you put yourself there so do something about it.”

Although I don’t analogize that reasoning to the political sphere, I had the same interpretation about the lyrics. It made me think about people who want something really bad and them complain about it when they get it.

I’m reminding myself of this now when I fall into a victim mindset about law school. For the most part, I’m loving all of the reading and class time. But it’s a lot. And it’s stressful. So much of my future—so they say—rests on my first year. I want to do well so I can get a good job, and because of that, I add even more pressure on myself to perform, feeling like this year is all or nothing.

But sometimes I wonder, is it worth it? When I’m falling into the mindset of, “There’s so much reading,” or, “I’m so busy,” or, “Why do we have to do this extra class?” I’ll try to remind myself, “*this is what you asked for...*”

*I* took the LSAT, *I* wrote the application essay, *I* paid all the money for textbooks. This is, quite literally, what *I* asked for.

Heavy is the crown, but if I don’t want to wear it, I can always just take it off.

Heavy is the Crown


One of the reasons I went to law school was because of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. It’s not like a had a conversation with him...obviously. He’s long dead. But his works, ideas, and life are not!

I read [Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War Law and Ideas](https://www.dltn.io/posts/oliver-wendell-holmes-a-life-stephen-budiansky) a while ago, and the passion and zest Holmes had for the law, logical thinking, and clear writing was inspirational to me. I was fascinated with his work, I thought maybe I could *do* what he did. (Be a lawyer, that is.)

I went into school liking the book so much that Holmes felt like my “mentor” or at least a big inspiration for why I was there, and that was special. I held him in high regard.

So I was ecstatic when we were assigned to read an excerpt in Torts from his book, *The Common Law*. I was even more excited when a case he wrote the opinion for was in our torts book. But...then I read the case, and we talked about it in class, and my professor kind of dissed on him. We talked about it afterwards in his office hours, and he said from the opinion, it was clear that Holmes had *never* driven a car—which he probably hadn’t—yet was creating a rule of law that required people who came to a railroad track crossing to get out of their car and look to make sure no train was coming before they crossed in their car. That’s...ridiculous.

After our conversation, I looked in the biography to see what the author said about that opinion, and I now agree. Here’s what the author wrote:

> His zeal to write into the law his draconian views about risk led him to render one of his other most notoriously bad decisions on the Supreme Court...Holmes held that a railroad was not at fault in a fatal grade-crossing accident where the view of the tracks was obstructed to an approaching driver. Showing if nothing else that he had never learned to drive himself, Holmes ruled as a matter of law that it was a driver's duty to stop, get out of his car, and look down the tracks to see if a train was coming.
>
> [...] 
>
> [Louis] Brandeis thought the Court had had no business taking on these cases in the first place and that Holmes had pressed his colleagues to do so mainly because he was "incorrigible when there is an opportunity of curbing the power and province of a jury." 
> 
> [...] 
>  
> While in so many areas of the law Holmes would prove decades ahead of his time, his Darwinian attitudes toward injury cases seemed at times almost a throwback to the nineteenth century—holding firm to a conception of tort law that was rapidly being swept aside by the very kind of nuanced balancing tests and apportionment of responsibility between the parties that he otherwise so zealously advanced.

I thought this was really interesting because it shows:

1. How not-closely I read biographies. I read parts closely but other parts not, but I don’t remember any mention of this case in the book. (But I did apparently think it was ridiculous when I read it because I wrote marginalia that said, “This is ridiculous lol”.) And;\

2. How not everyone we admire from history was “perfect.” I struggle with this. After I read a book about Truman or Lincoln or Adams or Jefferson, I’m enthralled with who they were (or, at least who the book portrayed them to be), that I usually remember all of the good quotes and cool things that they did and forget about the not-so-good things they did decisions they made. I don’t think there’s anything wrong about admiring people from history, but I’m reminded of being a bit more cautious in the people I choose to model my life and career after.

This post didn’t really have a point, but I was excited to see how my love of learning and history that I’ve poured myself into the last three years is finally converging into something useful, I guess? It’s fun to see the people and ideas and history I’ve learned about appear in contexts other than a book I’m reading on my back porch.


Justice Holmes

Last year on the podcast, Jerry Colonna said something that deeply resonated with me: how are you complicit in creating the conditions you say you don’t want?

You don’t want to be stressed? Why do you keep leaving important projects and tasks until the last minute?

You don’t want to be tired? Why do you keep starting Netflix shows at 10p.m.?

You don’t want to be so unhealthy? Why do you keep eating Taco Bell three times a week?

None of those questions have easy answers, but when you ask yourself that question and then evaluate every area of your life that you’re not happy with, I’m sureyou might find a few things that are creating—or helping to create—the conditions you say you’re not happy with.

I see this almost every day at school. I overhear people say how they’re so confused in Contracts or Civil Procedure, and then I see them online shopping during class or bragging (I guess?) about how they were too busy over the weekend to do the reading.

Like…you’re confused because you’re not paying attention and aren’t doing the reading. That is not a hard conclusion to draw; it’s a very simple cause and effect pattern. Those people are creating their confusion and then complaining about it! I simply don’t understand.

It’s like if you stabbed yourself in the hand everyday and then went around going, “Man my hand hurts really bad. This is super annoying because it’s making it harder to do other stuff in life.” Like, okay, stop stabbing your hand. Problem solved!

I’m not saying that just because you’re struggling or are unhappy in a certain area in your life that it’s 100% your fault, because that’s just simply not true. But, I bet there are a few things—a good amount of things maybe—that you do cause, or at least add to the causing, through your behavior somehow. I know I have those things for me.

**Ask yourself:** How am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?

**And then ask:** What am I going to do about it?


lawschool