Ralph S. Brown.

• Author: Bittker, Boris Irving
• Position: Ralph Sharp Brown, Intellectual Property, and the Public Interest - Brief Article

At the end of Ralph's suggested list of speakers for this memorial, he said, "Admonish them to be brief." That caveat, of course, mirrored Ralph's abiding modesty. It surely also reflected a weariness induced by his faithful attendance at half a century of meetings that, however worthy and even essential they may have been, were needlessly protracted. And Ralph's courtesy led him to refer to us, the speakers, as "them," using a collective pronoun rather than specifying those in particular need of his advice. We are thus enabled to proceed in the spirit that animated a British cabinet on addressing Queen Victoria, when they amended their introductory disclaimer--"conscious as we are of our failings"--to "conscious as we are of each other's failings."

Other speakers at this memorial will talk about Ralph's professional career as a teacher and scholar, his role in administrating the Yale Law School, and his participation in the work of the American Association oF University Professors. My subject is Ralph's contributions to a broad spectrum of public affairs and civic organizations and his ever-present love of nature and the world around us.

Let me begin by noting that law was actually a second-best choice for Ralph. He had come to Yale College--a poor country boy, by his own description--in 1931, and he wanted, on graduating in 1935 from Yale College, to pursue the career of a historian. But he was unable to get a fellowship in those difficult times and he therefore took a job as an editor of the Horace Walpole Correspondence in Sterling Memorial Library, hoping to save enough from his modest salary to enter graduate school and then move into his chosen occupation. This was in the mid-1930s, however, and his Yale College friends who had entered the Yale Law School were fired with excitement in the school's classrooms and corridors over the great forensic battles between President Roosevelt and the Supreme Court over the constitutionality of the New Deal legislation. Their enthusiasm was contagious, and Ralph shifted his sights from history to law. The Law School was more generous with financial aid; but even so, he had to work part-time in the Library's Walpole Project to make both ends meet. He earned his LL.B. in 1939 and worked briefly with a Wall Street law firm and then with the wartime Office of Price Administration in Washington. His next port of call was the Navy, where he served for four years, much of the time in hazardous Pacific...