Judge Guido Calabresi : The Future of Law and Economics [70:44-74:45]

a Democrat, Fred Parker was a Republican from Vermont, a much more liberal judge, if you want to. But in that way, both with great experience as trial judges, while I'd never said foot in a courtroom when I became a judge, said to me, you can't grant habeas here. You just can't do it. And I worried about it, and finally said, you know, makes no sense for me to dissent, and so I wrote an opinion of holding the conviction. Every time, more and more evidence came in that this guy was innocent, and he kept trying to go in state court to get that conviction, quashed in the state judge, said, never too much, the finality, this and that. And I started wondering whether I had been wrong in not dissenting, no, dissent, what good does that do, after all, if I don't, if I dissent, Josebled right an opinion, will write a much fiercer opinion than I did. And so I might as well go along, but then I started saying, had I dissent it and said, I have real doubts about this, that would be before the state court judge. And it became a kind of lesson to my clerks. I talk about it with my clerks over the years of when you dissent and when you don't. And so it went. It happened that one of my clerks then went to work for a law firm, and this guy was desperately trying to get people to help him out. And this clerk talked the law firm into taking it on the pro bono, and a couple of years later, they managed to get so much stuff that this guy was innocent. It just could be no doubt about it, that the state court let him out, 17 years after he had been in jail. No, our habeas was not 17 years, but you know this guy. So the guy got out. And my clerk said to him, would you like to meet Guido? The guy who'd written the habeas opinion, he said, yeah, yeah. And he did, we met, he's gone to college, gone to law school, he's married, got ten million bucks from the state, of course, for that, and is now living quite a good life. I've just been invited to be an adoption ceremony for a child that his wife has had. So in a way, there's a good ending to this. And yet he served in jail under awful conditions for 17 years. And I wrote that opinion. And it still is, you know, there are more dramatic ones having to do with a constitution or a viscer, that, and things, and I could tell you about that. But that still comes down to how hard, how interesting, how complicated the job of judge is. And you do the best you can, you do the best you can. And when you've done it, it's between you and your God. Judge Calbrice, see, this is a place where we have very special conversations about the law and the constitution, none is ever more special than one that includes you. And I hope you'll come back. It's honor to have you. It's a great privilege. Thank you for being here. Thank you.