Lessons from a Life Well-Lived: A Tribute to Randall P. Bezanson

• Author: Gail Agrawal
• Position: Dean and F. Wendell Miller Professor of Law, University of Iowa
• Pages: 1467-1471

1467

Lessons from a Life Well-Lived: A Tribute

to Randall P. Bezanson

Gail B. Agrawal

As I sat down to write this tribute to Randall (“Randy”) Bezanson, the

David Vernon Professor of Law, I did it with the full knowledge that he

would surely hate it. How do I know this with such certainty? And since I do,

why do I write it after his death when he cannot object? To explain, I have to

begin two years ago.

In 2012, the Iowa College of Law students selected Professor Bezanson

to give the unfortunately named “Last Lecture.”1 The invitation to give this

lecture is an honor bestowed by the people most important in the

professional universe of every teacher: students. This lecture matters. Shortly

after his selection as the 2012 lecturer, I asked Randy about his intended

topic. “The Supreme Court and Citizens United,” he replied with some pride

and complete certainty.2 Thinking that the students were expecting his

reflections on life rather than law on this one occasion, I probed, suggesting

cautiously that the lecture was not after all entitled, “The Last Constitutional

Law Lecture.” To which Randy responded, not at all cautiously, with a

rhetorical question: what did I expect, that he would offer some “mushy-

thinking” sentimental discourse? “No, of course not,” I retreated. Suffice it

to say, the conversation ended there. Randy gave the “Last Lecture,” which

was, fortunately, not his last, and the topic was a rigorous critique of Citizens

United v. Federal Elections Commission. Not a single off-topic or personal

reflection offered, unless one stretches the point to count a scholar’s analysis

of a Supreme Court opinion as a “personal reflection.”

I admit to some lingering disappointment, not with the quality of the

lecture or even the choice of the topic, but for an opportunity lost. Randy

had a different lesson-set that he could have shared that day, one that I was

anxious to learn: how did he manage to display such extraordinary grace,

unfailing good humor, and simple courage in confronting his illness, its

 Dean and F. Wendell Miller Professor of Law, University of Iowa.

1. The Last Lecture series has since been renamed the George Wright Legacy Lecture,

named for the late Iowa state supreme court Justice Wright, one of the founders of th e

University of Iowa College of Law.

2. Referring to the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Citizens United

v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010).