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53 Va. L. Rev. 772 (1967)
Thank You Note to Professor Gregory, A

handle is hein.journals/valr53 and id is 774 raw text is: A THANK YOU NOTE TO PROFESSOR GREGORY Edward A. Mearns, Jr.* E VERY student comes to law school with an image of what law is and what law study is all about. That image can be quite fuzzy and may correspond not at all to the real legal world. On entering law school, my own picture of the law was that its central concern was with torts. At the time, I did not know what a tort was, but the con- crete picture I had formed in my mind was of auto accidents, physical injuries, libel and slander, suits for damages and the struggle of clever lawyers arguing before tough judges and juries. This is in fact the stuff of which torts is made. Unlike most other .beginning students, nothing that happened my first year in law school changed my image of law. It takes a great teacher to make you feel his subject is the most important in the curriculum. My torts teacher, Professor Charles Greg- ory, did that. Torts, for me, was law school. Down the alphabet, he would come ... Mr. Leisure ... Mr. Lewis ... Mr. Martin .... Although you were better prepared for your day than you had ever been in college, the pattern was always much the same; the twinge of fear, then the challenge and exhilaration, and finally, the frustration of not being quite equal to the case or hypo thrown at you. Each day in class we wrestled-each day was good. Every day we faced the facts of legal life. And every day we laughed a little while we learned. As the term went by, we were treated to case analy- sis, the rules of the cases, the principles drawn from the rules, the poli- cies behind the principles, and the value picture behind this system of rules, principles and policies. We were presented the philosophy of torts-fault, compensation, risk distribution-as well as its philoso- phers. It did not stop there, for then we were shown tort law as a process, with its burdens of proof, and its division of labor among judges, juries, legislators and trial lawyers. Exam time came, and though we had not seemed pressed, we had covered a good deal of ground without sacrifice of depth or detail. Moreover, a great many of us wanted to go on learning more about torts. This is the mark of the great teacher; that he implants in his students the desire to learn more about the material he teaches. *Associate Dean, University of Virginia School of Law. B.S., 1951, Yale University; LL.B., 1958, University of Virginia. [ 772 l

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