I had many fine teachers in law school, but one who stood out as possessing a particularly impressive combination of teaching skill, scholarship, and general all-around human decency was Stanley Henderson. On the occasion of his retirement, he has penned a typically lovely essay ruminating on the art of being a law teacher. Here's a taste:
We educate law students through cases, and every case tells a story of people and their problems. And every class has a story of its own. It must be remembered that the ideas making up our common law are “constructed” ideas. The problem, as you know, is that they are also undergoing constant “reconstruction.” So we who “do law” live with much ambiguity and uncertainty. Our task in the Academy is to discover, and to understand, what it is that gives “commonness” to our common law.
That is why the inquiring element—the putting of hard questions—is therefore central to the enterprise. It is, after all, the “hard” cases that increase our confidence in identifying the “easy” cases. ...
The point to be underscored is that, whatever the time period, it is passion and commitment that bring one to law study in the first place. And that is what carries one through law school and beyond, whatever the career path. ...
You now know that we teachers spoke the truth when we told you that we could do no more than prepare you for a lifetime of self education.
We “passed on the culture” mainly by sowing seeds. But the real game—the discovery of self and a sense of purpose, of proportion—was always yours, when you sat here in rows, and when, in the years since, you have faced into the headwinds, at times fierce.
An aspiring law teacher could do worse than to emulate this gentle yet demanding man.
