Presentation of the Henry T. King, Jr. award.

• Author: Ujczo, Daniel
• Position: PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADA-UNITED STATES LAW INSTITUTE HENRY T. KING, Jr. ANNUAL CONFERENCE on THE CANADA-UNITED STATES REGULATORY REGIME: REVIEW, REFORM, RECOVERY: Cleveland, Ohio: April 8-10, 2010

Speaker--Daniel Ujczo

Speaker--Michael Scharf

Speaker--George Brown

INTRODUCTION

MR. UJCZO: Good evening. I am Dan Ujczo, the managing director of our Canada-United States Law Institute (CUSLI). (1) On behalf of the Institute, as well as our two founding institutions, The University of Western Ontario Faculty of Law and Case Western Reserve University School of Law, (2) I thank all of you for attending our 27th Annual Conference, (3) and I extend a special debt of appreciation to our speakers and panelists today. This was one of the most informative, as well as exhausting, days that we have had in the history of the Annual Conference, and many thanks to you.

I encourage all of you to join us again tomorrow, bright and early. The bell will toll at 9:00 a.m., opening with "transfer pricing" with Miller Williams and Jeff Shafer, as well as our "border" sessions with Jessica LeCroy, Laurie Tannous, Cindy Todgham Cherniak, and Kate Friedman. We will conclude with the planning session that I talked about earlier today. While we are in the home stretch, so to speak, there are still a number of informative and extremely important sessions yet to be presented.

I know this evening, as we pause for a moment to honor Henry King, (4) we have already broken Henry's rule. We are running a little bit late today, and he was a stickler for the time. I mentioned yesterday that this was a period of mixed emotions for a number of us, as we were starting this conference for the first time without Henry.

On the one hand, Henry is not with us. Throughout this week, we discussed the ways that we are honoring his legacy, both within the law school in terms of physical developments, and in the community through a number of initiatives to honor his legacy in terms of his name. I hope you have had the opportunity, as Dean Rawson (5) advised, to stop by our library to see the permanent display to Henry.

On the other hand, as we witnessed this weekend, this is also a new era for our Institute with the appointment of our new co-chairs. Last night set the perfect tone for both this conference and our Institute in terms of Governor Blanchard and Minister Peterson and their leadership of our Institute. (6) They were here bright and early at 7:30 a.m. for our Executive Committee meeting, already planning next year's conference.

Those of you that knew Henry know that he loved the morning. Henry was up every day at 4:00 a.m., reading a few papers. Some of you were on the receiving end of those 5:30, 6:00, and for me 6:30 a.m. calls every day for the fifteen years that I knew him: "Dan, did you read this in the New York Times?" Trust me, I had not read the New York Times at that moment.

The stories are legendary. When I worked at the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, I would run through the halls to answer the phone at 6:30 a.m. in the morning when it was Henry. The United States Marshals still have it all on videotape: me diving for the phone. If I missed the call it would roll to voicemail, and a few minutes later it would be Henry: "Dan, I am worried about you. Why are you not in the office at 6:30 a.m.? Are you taking a day off?."

As much as Henry loved the morning and savored every day, the evening was his time to shine. While throughout this weekend we have made tribute to Henry, as we move forward with our Institute, we pause in the present to reflect on the past. Some of my favorite moments of Henry, as I have stated on a number of occasions, were sharing a drink with him at an airport or on an airplane. There are some famous stories.

I know a number of you have heard this, but one of my favorite stories is when Mike Robinson, Larry Herman, and Jim Blanchard hosted an event in Toronto in March when there was a snow storm, but Henry and I had to be in Ottawa. He had an Honorary Council meeting; I forget what I was doing up there. It was a typical March day in Ottawa: there was about two feet of snow on the ground. We were sitting in the Ottawa airport, and we had to get to Toronto for a CUSLI event.

As we were boarding the plane, they announced that this would be the last plane to leave Ottawa that day. As we were sitting on the tarmac, the captain said there would be a fifty percent chance that the plane would land in Toronto, meaning that the plane might be coming back to Ottawa. As we were in the air, I just hear Henry laughing hysterically. He looks at me, and I said, "Henry, what's so funny?"

He said, "At my age, fifty percent chances are not so bad." That was one of the countless stories that we all share about Henry.

Some of my favorite moments, in the thirteen years that I have been around the conference, were at this time of the night. For a number of years, as you may remember, we had a panel in the evenings. We had to stop doing the Saturday evening panel because we would inevitably bring wine. The transcript of the Q&A for that evening...