Byron White.

• Author: Katzenbach, Nicholas
• Position: US Supreme Court Justice

Upon his discharge from the Navy in the fall of 1945, Byron White returned to Yale Law School to finish his final year. It was there that I first met this talented, modest man. But for the fact that before World War II the press had made him an athletic legend--All-American triple-threat halfback, Rhodes Scholar, National Football League All Star (while attending Yale Law and playing Sundays for the Detroit Lions)--one would never have guessed this quiet, bespectacled law student was the famous "Whizzer"--a nickname he hated all his life.

I can only recall one class Byron and I had in common--a seminar called "Law, Science and Policy" taught by Professors Myres McDougal and Harold Lasswell, the latter a highly regarded political scientist. The purpose of the seminar, as its title suggests, was to explore various relationships between the social sciences, especially psychology, and law and to explore ways and means to make law more scientific in its reasoning and application. McDougal was a great intellect--a poor boy from Mississippi who had won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, had the great legal historian Holdsworth as his tutor, and made a double first. He had a wide-ranging curiosity about all matters intellectual, and whatever he taught usually turned out to be the philosophy of law.

Those who knew Byron then and later would scarcely have thought "Law, Science and Policy" was his cup of tea. And, indeed, it was not. But Byron, who seldom volunteered in class but was often called upon, brought an intelligent skepticism to the discussion, and this delighted McDougal. Until his death he always maintained that Byron was the best student he ever taught, and despite rarely agreeing, Byron greatly admired Mac and held him in both high esteem and affection.

I lost touch with Byron until the late fall of 1960. I was in Switzerland on a Ford Foundation Fellowship and Byron, who had become a successful trial lawyer in Denver after his clerkship with Chief Justice Vinson, had been active in President Kennedy's campaign. I had followed the campaign from abroad and become increasingly enthusiastic about Kennedy's election--so much so that I wondered if I could serve in his Administration. I telephoned Byron, who had been named Deputy to Bobby Kennedy, and inquired as to any possibilities in the Justice Department. He told me to get to Washington if I really had any interest. I did.

Although it is somewhat immodest to say so, I think Byron put together with Robert Kennedy perhaps the most accomplished group of young lawyers ever to serve together in that Department. Given the criticism with respect to his own appointment, Bobby Kennedy was determined to have quality and to run a remarkably...