For my friend. (Columbia Law School law professor Charles Black)

Yale Law Journal, June, 2002 by Bobbitt, Philip Chase

Auden wrote somewhere that a friend is simply someone of whom, in his absence, one thinks with pleasure. How do we measure that against Dante's famous observation that there is no greater pain than to remember happy days in days of sorrow? (1) They are both right, are they not? I cannot think of my first memory of Charles without smiling even though all afternoon my throat has ached with the strain of suppressed anguish at the loss of him. "Memory is all that the death of such a man leaves us." (2)

I met Charles early in my second year in law school. I was in Boris Bittker's office and he asked, "Where are you from?" "Austin, Texas." "Have you met Charles Black?" Of course Charles had many friends who were friends of my parents, and they had asked me to look...

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