Befriended by Abe Goldstein.

AuthorKahan, Dan M.
PositionYale Law School faculty member - Testimonial

The friendship I formed with Abraham Goldstein is among the most valuable of all the many benefits my life as a legal academic has conferred upon me. My affectionate connection to Abe was cemented during the five years (a lamentably brief period) that I shared with him on the Yale Law School faculty. But my friendship with him actually commenced before I arrived in New Haven--indeed, well before I even met Abe in person. Had I never enjoyed the privilege of meeting him and the pleasure of becoming his colleague, I would certainly have been deprived of many benefits--the insights reflected in his questions at workshops and lectures; the sophistication imparted to my own work by his generous comments; the energy and optimism with which he infected all who worked alongside him. Yet I still could have counted myself befriended by Abe because he chose, for no reason other than love of intellectual exchange, to share with me and countless others his penetrating and wondrous ideas.

Abe was an accomplished and expansive scholar. But the profound impact he had on the formation of my own scholarly imagination was achieved primarily through two of his works: his classic book, The Insanity Defense, (1) and his masterful article, Conspiracy To Defraud the United States. (2)

Like nearly all conventionally trained lawyers (having attended Harvard Law School, I was denied the benefit of Abe's instruction as a student), and like most aspiring criminal law scholars, I in my scholarly adolescence held the naive belief that the proper handling of mentally impaired criminal offenders presented an essentially doctrinal puzzle. Which of the various competing tests--the traditional M'Naghten rule, (3) the so-called irresistible impulse standard, (4) the hybrid approach of the Model Penal Code, (5) or the open-ended Durham formula (6)--worked best? Or should we (meaning I, as the aspiring legal expert, eager to write a tenure piece) formulate some superior alternative to all of these?

Then, in preparing to teach criminal law for the first time, I read Abe's book (scandalously, I had not read it before; but, as I said, I went to Harvard Law School), and learned that the doctrinal-puzzle-solving approach was but an academic conceit. Based on a painstaking examination of trial transcripts, jury instructions, case law, and judicial opinions, Abe concluded that "the words in which the defense should be cast are still receiving far more attention than they deserve...

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