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2012 Rutgers Univ. L. Rev. Commentaries 1 (2012)

handle is hein.journals/rgsusty2012 and id is 1 raw text is: RUTGERS LAW REVIEW COMMENTARIES JUNE 10,2012 BOOK REVIEW FRIENDLY FIRE HENRY FRIENDLY: GREATEST JUDGE OF HIS ERA. BY DAVID M. DORSEN. CAMBRIDGE: THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2012. PP. 498. $35.00 Reviewed by Jonah J. Horwitz* There are two questions one expects to be addressed, if not answered, in the biography of a great historical figure: 1) how did his life relate to his work and 2) how does his work stand up to the test of time. These are especially vexing questions for the biographer of a great judge. For the relationship, if any, between a judge's life and his work is a loaded subject, and the assessment of a judicial legacy carries with it all manner of perilous political and ideological assumptions. Nevertheless, the biographer must hazard answers, or there is little point in reading the book at all. Although David M. Dorsen has produced an impressive biography of Henry Friendly prodigiously researched, skillfully written, and discerningly edited it provides only sketchy and contradictory responses to these two fundamental questions. In the final analysis, therefore, the book is a noble failure, a victim of its own admirable ambitions. As Dorsen astutely points out, Friendly's life is noteworthy largely because it was, compared to most of the other legendary jurists of his time, so ordinary. Friendly was born in 1903 into a middle-class German-Jewish family in Elmira, New York. His father, a cold, demanding man in much the mold that Friendly later filled in his own family, expected young Friendly to excel. And did he ever. Friendly was possessed of an intellect that can only be described, despite the overuse of the term, as genius. Perhaps even rarer, his brainpower was matched with a relentless work-ethic and a profound intellectually curiosity. Harnessing these extraordinary gifts, Friendly rocketed through school, matriculating to Harvard at the age of sixteen, where he dazzled the faculty with his Ph.D.-level work. * BA with honors, 2006, Swarthmore College. JD cum laude, Order of the Coif, 2010, Northwestern University School of Law. The author can be contacted at horwitz.jonah@gmail.com. 1 Ru' rGER S TA w RF.VTF.W C OMMENTAR T.S JUNE 10, 2012

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