Yale According to Joe.

• Author: Fiss, Owen M.
• Position: Yale Law School professor Joseph Goldstein

Everyone is entitled to a mistake or two--I have had my share. Probably my most glaring is that I attended that other law school, the one a little up north. So, when I first joined the faculty in 1974, Yale was, if not an alien, then certainly an unfamiliar, institution.

Joe and Sonja Goldstein welcomed us to the community. They were our family away from family. They opened their house to us. Their friends became our friends. They were always available for dinner (Joe would call it a "bite"), or for a movie. Joe's father had once been in the movie business in Springfield, and that seemed to entitle him, almost forever, to a free pass to Cinema Showcase. Joe loved bargains, especially this one. We often talked about our children, and through word and example, Joe and Sonja helped us through our most difficult parenting days. Invariably, Joe and Sonja returned from their trips abroad with trinkets for our daughters. Every conversation with Joe ended, "Kiss the girls for me."

In all of these ways, Joe taught me about friendship, even love, a feat all the more remarkable given his seriousness of purpose and scholarly achievements. Joe worked long and hard, and was constantly exploring new frontiers and learning new subjects. He delighted in the study of constitutional law because it was a new challenge for him. Yet somehow he always found the time and energy for those he cared about. Joe did not love everyone--no one does, no one can, and besides, Joe was a man of particular likes and dislikes--but those whom he did love were among the blessed. They always saw the twinkle in his eyes; they felt the warmth of his presence; they were the object of his generosity and his extraordinary capacity to go out of his way for others.

Not only did Joe bring a certain human warmth to these halls, which sometimes can be oh-so-serious, but he also espoused a very distinctive understanding of the purposes of the Law School. He emphasized its academic as opposed to its professional side, and urged, indeed demanded, the prerogatives that rightly belong to any professor, above all, the freedom to pursue one's ideas' in any way that one happened to see fit. Joe was a free spirit. He fought against outside pressures, such as those that may be brought to bear on professors by the organized bar. Also, and more remarkably, he resisted the constraints that might be imposed on a professor, even unwittingly, by colleagues and, even worse, the dean. One of Joe's favorite...