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56 Tex. L. Rev. 1011 (1977-1978)
What Happened in Erie

handle is hein.journals/tlr56 and id is 1031 raw text is: OBSERVATION What Happened in Erie Irving Younger* April 25, 1938 was a Monday, and in those years Monday was decision day in the Supreme Court.' At noon2 the Justices took their places. God-like in the center sat the Chief, Charles Evans Hughes. Ranged alternately on his right and left in order of their seniority, the Associates: James Clark McReynolds, Louis D. Brandeis, Pierce Butler, Harlan Fiske Stone, Owen J. Roberts, Hugo L. Black, and Stanley Reed. The first item of business was the calendar of motions for admis- sion to the Bar of the Supreme Court.4 Twenty-eight motions were made and twenty-eight were granted.5 Now came the announcement of written opinions. There were twelve that day, of which the seventh was in case number 367, Erie Railroad Company v. Tompkins.6 The question for decision, it began, is whether the oft-challenged doctrine of Swi? v. Tyson shall now be disapproved.7 Those words announced to the world the decision that all lawyers acknowledge to be one of the most remarkable in the Supreme Court's history. It is the keystone of the procedure course taught at every American law school. In the eight months following the decision, no fewer than fifteen articles in legal periodicals took it as their subject. It has been referred to 1,755 times by the United States district courts, * Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School, 1978-79; Samuel S. Leibowitz Professor of Trial Techniques, Cornell Law School. A.B. 1953, Harvard University; LL.B. 1958, New York University. This is the text of the Eleventh Annual Will E. Orgain Lecture, delivered at the University of Texas Law School on March 1, 1978. 1. E. GRESSMAN & R. STERN, SUPREME COURT PR cTIcE 4-5 (4th ed. 1969). 2. On April 5, 1938, the Court adjourned to Monday, April 25, at noon. Official Journal, 5 U.S.L.W. 954 (1938). 3. Benjamin N. Cardozo was absent because of the illness to which, on July 9, 1938, he succumbed. 304 U.S. iii n.2 (1938); 305 U.S. iii n.1 (1938). 4. Oficial Journal, 5 U.S.L.W. 1011 (1938). 5. Id. 6. 304 U.S. 64 (1938). 7. Id. at 69. 1011

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