Yale Kamisar: a principled man for all seasons.

• Author: Kahn, Douglas A.
• Position: Testimonial

Yale Kamisar began his distinguished career as a law professor in 1957 at the University of Minnesota Law School. For three years prior to joining the Minnesota faculty, Yale had been an associate with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling specializing in antitrust law. Understandably, Yale and Minnesota assumed that he would devote the major part of his research and teaching to antitrust. At that time, the study of criminal law was near the bottom of the hierarchy of law school topics, and so young faculty often were assigned the task of teaching criminal law as the price to pay for the privilege of joining the faculty. Criminal procedure had not yet become a separate topic in law schools' curriculums.

As anyone who knows Yale can attest, when he undertakes a task, whatever it may be, he devotes all of his energy and intellect to performing it better than anyone else could. While he may not always outstrip everyone, he frequently does, and he is always outstanding. Yale did not merely take on the teaching of criminal law. He was one of several pioneers in the refashioning of that topic by identifying criminal procedure, not just as a separate topic in its own right, but as an intellectually rich subject of greater significance than substantive criminal law. He played a major role in demonstrating that criminal procedure is an important area of scholarship worthy of addition to the curriculum. It is true that Yale was fortunate that, soon after he took up this subject, the Supreme Court began to focus on the area and adopted new and innovative doctrines; but Yale had the wisdom to exploit that development. (1) Moreover, many of the Court's innovations can be directly traced to concepts that Yale propounded and eloquently defended. Yale's fascination with criminal procedure and related topics became so consuming that his interest in antitrust simply fell by the wayside. As a consequence, the world of criminal justice gained a great warrior, and the world of commercial law lost a scholar who undoubtedly would have contributed much to it.

Yale has been so prolific and influential in the development of the law that it is painful to single out some of his contributions to the exclusion of others. It is an especially difficult task for me since my expertise lies in other areas. Some of Yale's work, however, stands out, even to a novice like me.

Yale's greatest contributions, and his most seminal work, deal with police interrogations and the admissibility of confessions. His first publication in that area (2) was in 1963 when he reviewed and commented extensively and critically on an interrogation manual (3) written by Professor Fred Inbau and John Reid for use in police interrogations. Little did Yale anticipate that this modest undertaking would lead to his becoming a major figure in the expanding development of a relatively new field of law. The year after Yale's review was published, the Supreme Court decided two path-breaking cases dealing with confessions and the right to counsel before trial--Massiah and...