Dean Jacob D. Hyman Tribute

Segment Synopsis: Jack Hyman was the personification of UB Law School's very best qualities. He was committed to diversity, was a pioneer in studying the contexts within which law is made and practiced, was dedicated to the Law School and its students whose admiration for him was the envy of his colleagues. He had the ability to transcend differences among counsel in difficult cases. At the Law School he took an active interest in documents prepared for the university's provost and president. In his 54 years of faculty service at the university, Jack Hyman personified the very best qualities that we seek to achieve at the UB Law School. He had a life-long commitment to apply the legal skills to achieve the betterment and advancement of society, a commitment that informed his teaching and scholarship throughout his career and he was passionately committed to real diversity within the membership of the Bar and the student body at the Law School. He was a pioneer in studying the historical, political, and social context in which law is made and practiced. He had a real respect and affection for his students and was a dedicated teacher who sought to meaningfully participate with them in the learning process. Jack Hyman was dedicated to the Law School and participated willingly and with vigor in efforts to establish an effective development plan and program. He was loved and respected by his former students in a manor that his colleagues could only aspire to. The efforts of those who followed him were informed by his values, contributions, and aspirations for the school. Nils Olsen relates a personal experience with Jack Hyman that epitomizes his unique standing among UB Law School alumni. The story involves an environmental policy case that the Clinical Education Program studied. Nils Olsen sought his input on the Clinic's product regarding the case, in particular the matter of the local (rural) solid-waste landfill proposal opposed by the residents. The clinic was representing the residents and was scheduled to present oral argument in court on appeal. Prof. Hyman read the arguments, making numerous suggestions for improvement. Dean Olsen invited him to come to the Appellate Court in Rochester to hear the argument. They sat together at the Appellant's table. Two of the five justices were UB graduates of many years previous. The proceedings were delayed while the two justices engaged Prof. Hyman in dialogue. Dean Olsen admits that his oral arguments were "not held in the same esteem." He admits his surprise when, after the proceeding, the Appellate asked to be introduced to Dean Hyman.

Keywords: Bar Association; Career / Professional Experience; Contributions; Faculty; Law Professor; Law Students; NYS Court of Appeals; Significant Cases; Teaching Law; UB Law School; UB Law School general

Subjects: CAREER: LEGAL; LAW; PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE; UB LAW FACULTY

Segment Synopsis: Judge Scott's reflects on the Civil Rights Movement, and his own father's admonition to finish the Law School that he himself dropped out of. He praises Dean Hyman's personal involvement in student progress and how he taught them to learn how to learn, quoting a 19th century letter from Thomas Huxley to Charles Kingsley. He closes with the concept of Jacob Hyman as the person we should strive to become. Judge Scott (Class of 1974) reflects on the turbulence of the late '60s and early '70s and recalls his father, a UB Law student, telling his young son about Dean Hyman's encouragement of the father and probable disappointment over the father leaving the school. Judge Scott's father urged him to finish Law School so he wouldn't "let Jacob Hyman down." He showed a genuine interest in Civil Rights, understanding the struggles of the Movement for basic human rights. Judge Scott cites Dean Hyman for making a connection between what was learned and what could be done to affect societal changes that fueled so much unrest in the '60s. Jacob Hyman was cognizant of the personal issues minority students of that time brought with them and he took a personal interest to keep abreast of their adjustment to the school. "Jack Hyman made us learn how to learn." Judge Scott quotes a nineteenth century letter from Thomas Huxley to Charles Kingsley: "Sit down before a fact as a little child. Be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and whatever the abyss leads, or else you shall learn nothing." Jack Hyman taught how to seek objectivity and reasonableness, and how to advocate with a respectful voice. Jack Hyman, as teacher, lawyer, mentor, friend, was the person we should strive to become.

Keywords: Accomplishments; Ethnicity / Diversity; Experience as Student; Faculty / Professors; Law Faculty; Law Professor; Law Students; Legal Education

Subjects: CAREER: LEGAL; EDUCATION; PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE; UB LAW FACULTY; UB LAW MISCELLANEOUS

Segment Synopsis: Thomas Headrick opens describing the state of the law school as Jack Hyman became its Dean. He then reports on Dean Hyman's first Annual Report to the Chancellor followed by his assessment of the Law School's culture today as it has emanated from that report, focusing on how the Dean incorporated the burgeoning social issues of the day into the Law School curriculum to build lawyers well beyond the case method to include negotiation, persuasion, and careful drafting that would resolve social, economic, and political problems and conflicts, merging the school's theoretical approaches with practical orientation. He cites Dean Hyman for obtaining the necessary alumni support for his pedagogic expansion, his establishment of the Alumni Association that would ensure continued support, and his talents and acumen, strengthening the move to join the State University system. Dean Headrick's closing remarks focus on Jack Hyman's spirit at the Law School's core and on Jack Hyman, the man. Jack Hyman was a friend, advisor, and mentor; a loyal and passionate supporter of the Law School, and its leadership. "Jack became Dean in 1953." Dean Headrick reflects on how the post war years brought a series of short-term deanships at the Law School. Jack Hyman provided stability and continuity as dean until 1964. When Jack Hyman took the helm the faculty was small and poorly paid, enrollments were sinking along with applicant quality. Many students were also working full time to support themselves and families. All of which was included in his first annual report to UB Chancellor McConnell, the striking feature of which was Dean Hyman's "expansive conception of what changes were needed in legal education and how UB could innovate and offer leadership." His predecessors set a tone that established a culture of challenge to the established Law School order. Those themes were taken up in that report, questioning the usefulness of the case method as the exclusive pedagogical tool. He foresaw the burgeoning of legal topics built around public policies and laws not adaptable to the old pedagogy and emphasized the changing role of lawyers in society as shapers of these policies epitomized by John Lord O'Brian. To foster lawyers that would follow the path set by John Lord O'Brian, Dean Hyman argued for the incorporation of other social disciplines into legal education. He noted that close case analysis was one of many skills required for successful law practice, and the necessity for negotiation, persuasion, and careful drafting to resolve social, economic and political problems and conflicts, merging the school's theoretical approaches with practical orientation. To do this the Law School had to grow, inventing new courses and bringing in understanding of other disciplines. Despite the constraints of the struggling university of the times, Dean Hyman recruited faculty who shared his vision and brought non-conventional subjects and teaching to the curriculum, adding courses blending the theoretical with the practical, foreshadowing the extensive clinical programs that set the school apart from many others. He laid the foundation of alumni financial support to help pay for these initiatives by creating the Annual Fund for Legal Education, and organizing the Alumni Association. He put his talents and acumen behind the move to join the State University. Law School cultures shapes their development and place in legal education. The Law School of today pushes the conception and boundaries of law well beyond it disciplinary turf to help us understand how people, groups, movements, and nations act. And how legal and social structures shape, foster, and impede those actions. UB Law sees, studies, and teaches law without borders. In that first annual report may be seen a clear expression of UB Law School's culture, imbibed from his mentors and predecessors, developed by his own experience, and passed on to his successors. The school has integrated other academic territories and social environments and is dedicated to the exploration of the vast social tapestry in which law is woven. UB today is Dean Hyman's Law School: larger, more expansive, and better financed, but it is the Law School of his vision. His spirit inhabits its essence, sitting at its core. Jack Hyman was a gracious, gentle, humane, principled man, blessed with a subtle, acute intelligence, fully engaged in worlds both near and far, fun and challenging for his friends, helpful and instructive to all.

Keywords: Alumni; Alumni Association; Classes; Curriculum; Deans; Intellectual Tradition; Law Faculty; Legal Clinic; Practitioners and Faculty; Student Culture; UB Academic Advisors; UB Law School; UB Law School general

Subjects: CAREER: LEGAL; EDUCATION; TEACHING; UB LAW AS STUDENT; UB LAW FACULTY; UB LAW MISCELLANEOUS

Partial Transcript: "After more than an hour in Jack's office with me mostly talking, talking, talking, (kinda like I'm doing now) and Jack mostly smiling, smiling, knowingly smiling, kinda like he always did, but also asking questions and subtly underscoring the pieces he thought supported my goal, I left with some hope that I had a shot at the Assistant Dean job."

Segment Synopsis: Vivian Garcia's tribute to Jack Hyman, recalling her early days with the NLRB before applying for her position at UB Law School. What I know is that when I walked into his office that day—thanks to a dear friend from law school—I had been writing letters, sending out resumes, and ultimately working for a temp secretary agency in town (without telling them about my law degree). Indeed, some of you might find it as amusing as Jack did, to hear that a preeminent law firm in town offered to send me to paralegal school. Yes, they were just astounded not only with the precision and speed of my typing, but at my apparent knack with the law, and almost incredible proficiency with respect to detail. Jack laughed heartily at this piece of the story. I know you each remember it; it was a laugh that was deep and rich. It was a million-dollar laugh. It was Jack’s natural way, I found over the years, to nurture, not only in his mentoring of me but with how he dealt with, and respected, students. He continued to shape my love for being an educator when he asked me to co-teach a couple of legal reasoning classes to those special 1Ls. As I watched him in action in the classroom, I only gradually learned the full measure of the substantive breadth of what he was delivering. I learned something every time Jack spoke. Over the years I wrote him long — and short — letters about this or that disappointment or achievement. Over the years, I loved and appreciated him more and more. As I suspect many of you know, he always wrote back . . . always. He appeared constantly amazed at my courage and accomplishments. I have all of his letters. Our friend and former colleague, Susan Carpenter, was hoping to be here today, but ultimately could not. This week in an e-mail she wrote: "Remembering Jack Hyman will be a very happy time, though missing his presence in the flesh will be sad. I know his Spirit will be there, and that you will feel it. It wasn’t until after I graduated from UB Law School that I realized what incredible work Jack had done in his life. They should have a seminar on the jurisprudence of Jacob Hyman but I guess his humanity overshadowed it." You’re not kidding Susan.

Keywords: Career / Gender; Contributions; Faculty / Professors; Greatest Achievement; Law Faculty; Law Firms; Law Professor; Law School / Gender; Law Students; UB Law School; UB Law School general

Subjects: CAREER: LEGAL; LAW; PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE; TEACHING; UB LAW FACULTY; UB LAW: GENDER

Segment Synopsis: William Greiner meeting Jack Hyman, interviewing for a job at UB Law School, the Jack Hyman of UB's turbulent period, his social justice, humanity, and as a great teacher. At the appointed hour I went in to meet this man, Jack Hyman, and I must say I had many feelings about that interview. I was charmed, but I was impressed. I was impressed by intelligence, which was on display at a very high order, and I was also impressed by the dignity of the individual. He combined both great humanity with great wisdom. I have to tell you, I have never enjoyed a job interview more than that conversation with Jack Hyman. Once again he demonstrated his enormous intelligence, but his great humanity, and his great dignity. And as a result of that there an offer was made, and Carol and I came here. But I can say, honestly, and I have said this before, had it not been for Jack Hyman the rest of our life as we know it would not have happened in the way in which it did. We owe Jack that on a very, very personal level. He was the one who more than anyone else brought us to this, which has become our place. When we did come here it was 1967. We then, along with the rest of the American academy and the country, went through a very turbulent period. And it was during those days that people like Jack Hyman made an enormous difference. Jack, who knew both the University and the community, was particularly helpful because there were so many of us who were relatively young faculty, relatively new: How should we behave in this environment? What can we do for our University? Jack was an enormously important leader in this regard. He had a deep and abiding commitment to the University, in addition to the Law School, and he helped us all. He was a great advisor during that period. He was our guide during that difficult period. I remember one event in particular. The State, which had acquired UB in 1962, was going to invest in all new facilities for the University and the rehab of some of our older facilities on our historic South Campus. Millions and millions and millions of dollars were going to be spent on this construction project. Jack observed that the direct beneficiaries of this enormous State expenditure would be employers and employees in the construction business which, like so many of the businesses in our country at that time, was not integrated. Jack was the person in this University who stepped forward and said we should see to it that, as the State makes this great expenditure on our behalf and on behalf of our region, we should pay attention to the interests of all citizens of WNY. In his open letter he called for the State not to commence the building process at UB until it had taken steps to see to it that the construction trades would be integrated. We closed down the construction process at the University for a year while the Governor undertook to do right in this regard. While he could not change all that behavior and that history, we began a process which is still on-going. But it was a process that started with a call from Professor Hyman, former Dean Hyman, and picked up by our then President, Martin Meyerson, and ultimately by our governor. That was the kind of leadership that Jack could, and did, display. He was always the formidable presence, the dignified Dean Hyman, but you knew (and he did have great laugh) that underneath that somewhat austere demeanor there was this warm human being ready, on a personal level, to help if he could. Jack used to attend my classes and give me advice and it was always good advice. He was a friend. He was a helper. And he was a leader. But more than anything else, he was a teacher, and I think that’s how we should remember him. I know we will remember him in other ways, but remember him as a teacher. I do. Over my lifetime I’ve often said to myself, “How would Jack do it?” And if I ever came even close to how Jack did it, then I knew I was at least getting it right.

Keywords: Classes; Contributions; Deans; Faculty / Professors; Greatest Achievement; Hyman, Jacob; Intellectual Tradition; Law Faculty; Law Professor; Role Models; Teaching Law; UB Law School

Subjects: CAREER: LEGAL; LAW; PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE; TEACHING; UB LAW FACULTY; UB LAW MISCELLANEOUS

Segment Synopsis: It was my thought that it would be good to have a theme that would capture the essence of Jack Hyman for my brief remarks. And the theme that I settled on was, and is, "Jack Hyman: Investor Extraordinaire.” Not investor in the financial sense, but investor as defined in the dictionary: “To devote morally or psychologically as to a purpose; to commit to others.” Jack Hyman invested big time in the law, its practice, civil and human rights, our Law School, its students, and our alumni. Jack Hyman invested heavily in the students and in the alumni of our school. A few days ago I spoke to one of Jack’s best students, Jim Magavern. Jim focused on Jack’s extraordinary affection for students and alumni and the appreciation for all of us. How many here enjoyed Jack Hyman’s presence at their reunion? Six years ago at our 45th he was there at the age of ninety-two. How many events in the Law School alumni feature Jack Hyman? He's going to be there. He got the revitalization of the alumni started. Jack Hyman invested in human and civil rights and lent his expertise to many causes. On page sixty-eight of the hundred-year history of our Law School, there’s a discussion about the case brought by William SaMarion on behalf of about fifty Black Muslim inmates in Attica prison that the State wouldn’t recognize their rights. It mentions at that time, that Malcolm X and the Black Muslim movement were unpopular. Hyman, and Professor Wade J. Newhouse, assisted attorney Richard F. Griffin, and later, Professor Paul Birzon, in presenting the grievance. And the case was ultimately successful, and these gentlemen were recognized as having rights to practice their religion in Attica Prison. Then in the '70s, another leader of human and civil rights, who some may remember here, a non-lawyer, Norman Goldfarb, who was the Chairman of the Citizen’s Council on Human Rights (of which Jack was an active member), assembled a group of lawyers to talk about bringing the school segregation case. Jack was there providing his expertise. He breathed Brown vs. Board of Education, and its teaching, into the lawyers who were recruited for the case. Finally, Jack Hyman invested in good health. How do you live such a long and full life? Ninety-eight years! In addition to his great intellectual health and constant exercise of the mind in his activities, he was physically fit. One day, by coincidence, I was walking along the beach over in Canada, I looked out, and who emerged from the lake but Jack Hyman, probably eighty-eight or ninety. I said, "Jack, I didn’t know you were such a famous swimmer,” And we had a great chat. So in conclusion, we celebrate the life of an extraordinary "investor." He dedicated and committed his life to others and to great causes. This life is a model for us all.

Keywords: Alumni; Alumni Association; Character and Values; Contributions; Deans; Hyman, Jacob; Intellectual Tradition; Law School History; Significant Cases

Subjects: CAREER: LEGAL; LAW; PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE; TEACHING; UB LAW FACULTY

Segment Synopsis: John Schlegel's Love of Jack Hyman. Back in the '60s, back just after we in the West gave up writing on tanned hides, Burt Bacharach and Hal David penned a man-gone-away song with lyrics that began like this: "One less bell to answer, one less egg to fry, one less man to pick up after. I should be happy, but all I do is cry." The metrics make sense only with the music but the thoughts speak of all kinds of love, except for perhaps agapé, and so to the disappearance of Jack Hyman from my life. Ours was a love affair of the head, not of the heart. Not an affair born of passion but a growing affection that, while it never traveled through wild passion (Jack was not given to excess), over time grew into love. Jack always pushed me to think as well as I could, and in that way he tried to be not just a wrestling partner but a teacher too, as he, like most good teachers, could never stop teaching. Jack cared about faculty as a good teacher would care about his students. [Schlegel recalls Jack Hyman's concern over Janet Lindgren's beer with lunch, concluding:] Even when already partly disengaged, he saw more and cared more about his colleagues than he let slip out. Jack always wanted to wrestle over procedural answers to questions of government. His policy preferences were at times quite fierce: preservation of the New Deal regulatory edifice was one, and the '60s civil rights hopes -- edifice they never became, a failure that brought out Jack’s most combative instincts -- was another. But with me he was content to discuss his hope to discover a set of processes that would guarantee good outcomes. I, an eternal skeptic that such is possible, managed to shelve my general hostility to such process theories, an hostility that would otherwise have brought out scorn and vitriol, and I would instead play along. I used the word “play” quite carefully here. It is fun to play seriously with ideas. Jack loved to play with ideas; he played quite seriously. The fate of the Union might not had been at issue in our wrestling but the good of the Commonwealth was. The playing was fun for him as it was for me. The point was always improving each other’s thought, improving one's "wrist control," mastering the "half nelson," even trying a "double leg take down." Ours was an activity that each could engage in separately, that somehow worked better together. On my side, I supplied whatever manuscript I was working on; Jack supplied short and long notes. By the time I knew him, he had lost the compulsion to write that is my personal drug addiction, though not before completion of his last major effort: a review of Gerald Gunther’s Constitutional Law casebook. The piece was as quick a takedown at the end of a long match as any wrestler could wish for, when Jack observed that the book, and inferentially most of the scholarship in the area, had refined the doctrine to the point that it was largely useless to the litigating lawyer. He was, in the end, a Buffalo boy who remembered the vibrant place he came to when he started teaching at the Law School in the immediate postwar years. He was as bewildered as the rest of the locals when it came to understanding why the place came apart. Unlike most of them, the understanding of these events that my historical/historian’s distance provided was, or at least seemed to be, helpful to Jack, though he only became enthusiastic of all my pursuits in this area when I teamed up with Bill Greiner to pay attention to the economic redevelopment of the area that both Jack and I called Buffalo, though I always suspected with different geographic boundaries. Jack was at heart a litigating lawyer. In Janet Lindgren’s words, "he wrote for change." Though I did some litigation in practice, at heart I’m a transactional lawyer; I write for understanding. The New Deal litigating lawyer in Jack was not wholly comfortable with the bureaucratic universe he helped to bring about, and then found himself mired in. He wanted to be sure that the bureaucrats got it right. Still, we never allowed these differences in our approach to law to get in our way; to interrupt our fun. Writers need readers it is said. I’m not sure that such is the case but I do know that thinkers need wrestling partners. It is not a need that decreases with age unless, perhaps, solecism or brand maintenance reduces thinking to a set of obsessive-compulsive behaviors. But finding a durable "wrestling partner" is not easy. It takes time to learn the other’s moves, and then to figure out how to help make those moves better. As we age there is less time: perhaps we learn more slowly; figure out our responses more slowly, too. And so each of one’s existing partners becomes an increasingly important tie to the world of ideas. The loss of anyone narrows the circle of life of the active mind. Jack is gone; my circle is narrowed. I miss my wrestling partner; my life is more empty for his absence because for all of these years his presence made my life, my thoughts, better, richer, and more careful -- about all one can ask of a colleague, a teacher, and a friend.

Keywords: Areas of Scholarship; Career / Professional Experience; Contributions; Curriculum; Deans; Greatest Achievement; Hyman, Jacob; Intellectual Tradition; Legal Education

Subjects: CAREER: LEGAL; LAW; PERSONAL ISSUES; TEACHING; UB LAW FACULTY; UB LAW MISCELLANEOUS