Tribute to Jerry Israel.

• Author: Lehman, Jeffrey S.
• Position: Professor Jerold H. Israel's departure from the University of Michigan Law School - Includes five testimonials

My legal education began with Jerry Israel.

During the fall of 1977, I was assigned to his section of Criminal Law. From the very first day of class, Jerry made it clear to us that the problems of crime and punishment were at once profoundly important and elusively difficult. Jerry taught from judicial opinions in the classic Socratic mode. Each day we were forced to grapple with the perplexing manner in which the language of precedent, so comforting when first encountered in the frame of an opinion, turned to quicksilver when tested against new cases, real or hypothetical.

We spent our first few weeks on the grisly subject of late-term feticide, attempting to decide what we should think of a legal system that chose to treat it as a different sort of crime than infanticide. We then moved on to a comprehensive stroll through the full landscape of criminalized conduct. Jerry never attempted to offer us a unified field theory. Rather, his mission was only to show us that any authority we might seek to invoke, even the Model Penal Code, could be made to wilt under sustained and rigorous critique. By the end of the semester our band of ninety students--a group that had entered brimming with the hubris of moral certainty about criminal conduct--emerged with a surprising dose of intellectual humility, sensitized to the paradoxes that attend our collective effort to establish a morally defensible system of state-imposed punishment for the activities we choose to deem criminal.

One of the great bits of wisdom passed down from generation to generation of Michigan students concerned Jerry's impossibly difficult final exams. He did not disappoint us. According to the custom of the day, final examinations were typeset, and our criminal law exam could easily have stood upright on a bookshelf. While we were given four hours, we could easily have used twelve. Indeed, few sensations from my past have survived as vividly as the mounting panic I endured just reading through the first question. It was an extended hypothetical where a hypnotically induced, staged assault on the hypnotist's spouse was the prelude to guilt-driven revenge and the shooting of an innocent bystander. To this day the story remains imprinted in my mind as the ultimate demonstration of how our intuitions about moral and criminal responsibility crumble in the face of sociological complexity.

As students we knew little of Jerry's contributions as a scholar. We knew that he and his close friend Yale Kamisar disagreed passionately about criminal procedure. But it was not until I returned to join the faculty in 1987 that I came to appreciate the depth of Jerry's scholarly commitment and attainment.

Jerry had come to teach at Michigan directly from a clerkship with Potter Stewart. And after some early flirtations with subjects ranging from reapportionment to free speech, he settled down to devote himself to the study of criminal law and procedure for which he is revered. His casebooks and treatises, coauthored with Kamisar and Wayne LaFave, have given intellectual structure and momentum to the field. His articles and books have illuminated problems ranging from juvenile obscenity, to search and seizure, to white collar crime. His legislative work as a Reporter for the Uniform Rules of Criminal Procedure and for the state of Michigan have given his insights the force of law.

Making the transition from student to colleague also permitted me to see another side of Jerry that students can only glimpse: his warmth and his wit. Jerry is not a backslapper. He is, however, a wonderful mentor to junior colleagues, and he knows how to laugh at himself and others.

Over a thirty-five year span, thousands of Michigan students like me began their legal education with Jerry Israel. Many times that number have come to know his exceptional mind by reading his scholarship. Our faculty continues to consider him a role model of dedication to the scholarly craft. The Law Review brings distinction to itself and to our Law School by dedicating this issue to his honor.

Jeffrey S. Lehman, Dean and Professor of Law, University of Michigan. A.B. 1977, Cornell University; M.P.P. 1981, J.D. 1981, University of Michigan. -- Ed.

RANDOM THOUGHTS BY A DISTANT COLLABORATOR!

If Jerry Israel was born in the year 1934, then how is it that the state of Israel was not born until several years later? If you find that mind-boggling, then consider this: If, as is the case, I have known Jerry Israel since 1966, then how could it be possible that he did not get to know me until several years later? Although I am totally baffled as to the first conundrum, I can supply the mot de l'enigme -- actually, a bunch of mots -- for the second.

Back in 1965, the soon to be erstwhile(1) Dean of the University of Michigan Law School, Allan F. Smith, invited me to spend the Winter 1966 Term teaching there. This, he explained, was a part of that game of academic musical chairs which occurs when a series of law schools find it necessary to hire a visitor because one of their faculty is in turn filling such a need at another school. I would be replacing Jerry Israel, who had accepted an offer to visit at Stanford.(2) Not fully appreciating what the word "winter" means in Ann Arbor (and not forewarned that if I accepted I would be placed under the close scrutiny of the Michigan Law School's resident alienist during my time there(3)), I unhesitantly accepted the invitation. In short order Jerry telephoned to offer me his home at a rental I would have deemed exorbitant but for his explanation that his architect had also done the Taj Mahal, so I took the tenancy. I arrived in Ann Arbor on January 2, 1966, immediately moved into Jerry's digs and then was assigned his office, beginning a process by which over the next four months I came to know Jerry quite well. I can assure you, if you really want to get to know someone, sleep in his bed, sit in his easy chair, read from his library, listen to his loquacious cleaning lady, work in his office, and read his files.(4) (By contrast, I did not get to know much about Jerry from his colleagues, who seemed largely oblivious of his existence, but I won't go into that here.(5))

Not only did I spend an entire semester at Michigan without actually meeting Jerry, but I only infrequently have had the privilege of a face-to-face encounter with him since. One reason for this is that I have rarely returned to Ann Arbor, perhaps because of a fear that if I ever crossed that city's borders I would be placed again under close psychiatric surveillance. But I did return once, many years ago when I still was foolish enough to think that it would be enjoyable to watch the Fighting Illini football team play at Michigan. The game itself ranks as one of the all-time worst experiences of my entire life! An icy rain fell the entire day. Our seats were located in the first row and in the corner of the end zone, which because of the exaggerated crown of the playing field meant we had to look up to observe the action. I had not been forewarned of the advisability of wearing a "motorman's friend" to the game, and thus I spent the entire halftime and then some queued up with thousands of other hapless males in a serpentine lockstep shuffle toward Michigan Stadium's lone operational urinal. But the crowning blow was that Illinois's halftime lead lasted but minutes into the second half, a nonstop "Hail to the Victors" until the scoreboard reflected what I am sure was the most lopsided victory in the history of the Big Ten.

If you're wondering what all this has to do with Jerry, I'm coming to that now. After the game, Jerry and his wife Tanya received me and my family -- at this point a chilled, soaked, and dispirited band -- into their home for dinner. It was a wonderful event, full of laughter and good conversation, which I still fondly recall. The fact that our visit that evening made everything that had gone before seem insignificant certainly attests to the extreme warmth and friendliness of Jerry Israel. (There was one minor but somewhat ominous occurrence that evening, but I won't go into that here.(6))

Most of my face-to-face meetings with Jerry Israel came about because he and I, and also Yale Kamisar, served as Reporters on the Project of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws to draft Uniform Rules of Criminal Procedure. The three of us, by then coauthors of a comprehensive, hernia-popping criminal procedure casebook, were apparently viewed by the Commissioners as inseparable, sort of like the Three Musketeers, as they asked the three of us collectively to participate in the Project. The Project Director, Ken Kirwin, did all the heavy lifting; the three of us were expected merely to have great thoughts. Over a span of 1971-1974, we all met every three or four months with the Special Committee named for this Project, and it was in that setting that I gained a real appreciation for Jerry's abilities as a lawyer and a scholar in the criminal justice field. Time and again, it was Jerry who would come up with the unique and imaginative provision needed to solve the seemingly insoluble problem before the group. This happened so often that it is no overstatement to say that the final version of these Uniform Rules reflected more than anything the depth and breadth of Jerry's understanding of the totality of the criminal justice system. Indeed, I would go so far as to say (as I am sure Yale also would) that it is Jerry who deserves the credit for the impact which the Uniform Rules have had over the years. (But I won't go into that here.(7))

Although Jerry and I were collaborators on the Uniform Rules Project, most of the time I have been the "distant collaborator" referred to in the title of this fulsome fascicle of flummery.(8) For nearly thirty years we have worked together on a variety of books, and with rare exception we have carried out the planning and...