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77 Nw. U. L. Rev. 253 (1982-1983)
Light of Reason: A Tribute to the Late Professor Harold C. Havighurst

handle is hein.journals/illlr77 and id is 261 raw text is: Copyright 1982 by Northwestern University School of Law Printed in U.S.A. Northwestern University Law Review Vol. 77, No. 3 THE LIGHT OF REASON: A TRIBUTE TO THE LATE PROFESSOR HAROLD C. HAVIGHURST Willard H Pedrick * It was in the fall of 1936 as a callow first-year law student that I first encountered that most remarkable professor and philosopher of law, Harold Canfield Havighurst. We did not meet on an equal footing. As first-year students, neophytes, our class was struggling in unfamiliar terrain. Uncertain as to the objects of law study, bewildered by a strange and mystical vocabulary, we then encountered this seemingly benign intellectual who plainly had spent much of his life in the do- main of contract law, but had, as a result, garnered not answers but a seemingly endless supply of questions. Gentlemanly, normally con- trolled, and quietly reasonable, he would listen to a student state a con- tracts case, follow up on the statement with inquiries designed to improve on the accuracy of the rendition, and then move on with in- quiries to set the mind reeling and unhinge the tongue of not only the student standing in the target area but hapless and often involuntary volunteers as well. Commonly, all of this was carried on in a tone of sweet reason. On occasion, though, when one of our fellows had absolutely daz- zled the rest of us with a sequence of legalistic jargon that shrouded meaning, if any, in complete mystery, the Havighurst baritone, rich and vibrant, would ring out: WHAT! First aid would then be adminis- tered in the form of a remarkable reconstruction of the student's re- sponse, after which the student in astonishment agreed that yes, indeed, that truly significant proposition was just what he or she had been of- fering. But then, and so often, the seemingly attractive structure just rehabilitated would suddenly collapse under the impact of the next question. That is how Harold Havighurst made us into lawyers, bur- dened with an awareness for life that the answer is almost never wholly satisfying when tested in the light of reason. As students, we did not know much about him. We knew he had himself studied at Harvard, practiced in New York, and that he had taught at West Virginia University before joining the Northwestern law faculty. We knew also that he had produced an unconventional * Professor of Law and Founding Dean, Arizona State University College of Law. 253

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