Soifer, Aviam

English

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ALLAN MACURDY:"FROM YOUR LIPS TO GOD'S EAR"Aviam Soifer*How could Allan do it?Even those of us blessed to have known Allan over many years cannotfully grasp the answer. We could not and still do not believe his tenacityand courage, abiding curiosity, sparkling ability to make connections, andprofound and provocative insights. He gracefully and lovingly sprinkledthese qualities throughout his significant articles, engaging and oftenpath-breaking teaching, administrative acuity, and gift for both deepfriendship and casual conversation-to say nothing of the key role heplayed in the belated yet marked success of the Red Sox. And, oh-wasAllan ever funny!It undoubtedly seems strange, but I believe that the Yiddish expres-sion, "From Your Lips to God's Ear," might aid in understanding keyaspects of the Allan Macurdy Phenomenon. To me, the old Yiddishexpression seems to do nothing less than to pose a challenge to commonassumptions about jurisdictional boundaries, life on earth, and a higherdimension. It also underscores the potential power of the spoken word.Finally, the thrust of its words is in a move toward a better world. Thisaudacious hope is made at least thinkable through a subversive collabora-tion between human verbalization and divine intervention. In otherwords, a just God would heed what you just said.Allan was preoccupied by conversing on many levels about what justiceought to mean in the here and now, and in the near future. The wondersof technology allow even someone like me-somewhat technophobic andcertainly a techno-fogey-to retrieve snatches of e-mail conversationswith Allan over many years. I therefore very quickly found an essay bythe novelist Richard Powers, "How to Speak a Book," that Allan for-warded to a few friends in early January 2007.1 In this essay, Powers con-vincingly argues that the physical act of writing "damages memory,obscures authority, and even alters meaning."' But even Powers's fine* Dean and Professor, William S. Richardson School of Law, University ofHawai'i.1 Richard Powers, Book Review, How to Speak a Book, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 7, 2007,§ 7 at 31. Apparently Allan subscribed to the advanced copy Book Review service orhad some other means to see an advance copy, as his e-mail was before 8 am on themorning of January 6, 2007.2 Id. Powers makes the good point that these thoughts really simply translate thewords of Socrates, at least as written down in the "Phaedrus," which he points out isPlato's "suspect transcript." Powers also neatly celebrates his own ability to write byessay does not come close to the wonder contained within the succinctintroductory message from Allan as he forwarded the essay.That January, Allan spoke/wrote the following: "This essay conveysone blessing of being unable to move-many have proven that bodilyshackles cannot cage the mind, but few know the joy and magic of speak-ing your words in the glory of the language!" Leave it to Allan'sunquenchable spirit to deem the physical boundaries he faced to be partof a blessing, and to be productive of joy, magic, and even glory.Even a small sample of Allan's e-mails bounces with his verve for ideasand for exchanges about them, discussing the pluses and minuses of sheerintellectual audacity, for example, or how much to bring out his ownvoice. He is excited when he discerns that "sovereignty is a normativeanimal"; after two winter months with "a tenacious pneumonia," he ishappily at work on full faith and credit and has begun to think about"reasons to respect other states laws as aggregate voices of self-determi-nation-sort of a Democratic theory of comity"; he keenly perceives that"the jurisdictional questions are what attract me to Admiralty and federalIndian law," and now he is considering the wisdom of creating and offer-ing a new course "in federal practice/advanced procedure."' There wereno jurisdictional barriers to Allan's remarkably supple mind.In fact, Allan's ongoing concern with and challenges to boundaries andjurisdictional lines might be traceable in large measure to his acute senseof physical constraints. What stands out throughout his scholarship, how-ever, is how brilliantly he challenged accepted assumptions about limitsof all sorts. Repeatedly, Allan demonstrated that the constraints we faceand consider insurmountable are usually our own creations. He did this,for example, in some of his most recent work when he worried that Disa-bility Studies was in danger of becoming "substantially disconnected"from a generation of civil rights jurisprudence that could be instructiveabout "the tenacity and complexity of prejudice."4Writing, teaching, or conversing, Allan used his intellectual breadthand his finely attuned legal mind to emphasize connections and broadvocalizing, thanks to a three-pound tablet PC. It is intriguing that Powers invokes thesame Yiddish expression discussed above, though I believe his version contains aslight mistranslation. Powers has it as: "From your lips to God's ears." Id. Powersuses this "old Yiddish wish" to underscore an important further point. Powers notes,"Writing is the act of accepting the huge shortfall between the story in the mind andwhat hits the page." He goes on to contrast the work of any writer with the Yiddishexpression, and he adds: "The writer, by contrast, tries to read God's lips and passalong the words, via some crazed game of Telephone, to a further listener." Id.Powers's novel, The Echo Maker, won the 2006 National Book Award.3 E-mails from Allan Macurdy to author (February 11, 2003; April 27, 2005;November 29, 2006) (on file with the editors).4 Allan Macurdy, Review Essay: Thinking About Rights: A Review of "DisabilityRights," 26(4) DISABILITY STUDIES Q. (2006), http://www.dsq-sds-archives.org/articles-html/2006/fall/macurdy.asp, T 1.challenges. And he never wavered from his belief that there are universalrights, often obscured by legal analysis as well as by the rampant individu-alism he decried.' Indeed, for Allan, jurisdictional questions should forceus all to drill down to basic issues. As he put it, "Disability rights existedprior to their infringement by majorities and the state, and the rightsmovement arose to combat that infringement.",6Toward the end of his life, Allan saw commonality in the legal argu-ments and the organizing that helped produce Lord Mansfield's cele-brated decision to free Somerset-a slave brought from Virginia to GreatBritain, and about to be shipped to Jamaica to be sold-by reasoning that"the Air of England was too pure for slavery."7 As a person who defi-antly triumphed over isolation all his life and who depended on a respira-tor for much of it, Allan had begun to develop "a fundamentalconstitutional value of interaction upon which all other rights depend."8To him, "independence from others is not only myth but is pernicious."9By contrast, Allan embraced the Letter from the Birmingham Jail inwhich Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. identified "an inescapable network ofmutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny"-and Allan added that "allof us take in from the same air" and thus we must rely upon each other"to protect the air" and we must depend on "the web of relationship"that keeps us from "social asphyxiation and the death of self."1But no one should be fooled into thinking that Allan was a softie. Hiscareful, often caustic, and always hard-headed scholarship and teachingentirely refute any such notion." Nonetheless, many people will mostfondly remember Allan Macurdy for his extraordinary skill in tran-scending boundaries and his great creativity in making original and com-pelling connections. One hesitates even to say "unique" about anindividual who so often and so cogently critiqued individualism, but con-5 Thus, for instance, "Rights are too important to be left to lawyers, but thestruggle for rights and their protections is a universal one." Id. $i 10.6 Id. $ 4.7 Somerset v. Stewart (1772), 98 Eng. Rep. 499 (K.B.)8 Allan Macurdy, Rights Respiration: Disability, Isolation, and a ConstitutionalRight of Interaction, 13 TEX. WESLEYAN L. REV. 737, 746 (2007).9 Id. at 740.10 Id. at 748.11 See, e.g., Allan Macurdy, The Americans with Disabilities Act: Time forCelebration, or Time for Caution?, 1 B.U. PUB. INT. L.J. 21 (1991) (showing hiswillingness to rain carefully yet heavily on the parade for the new ADA); AllanMacurdy, Disability Ideology and the Law School Curriculum, 4 B.U.PuB. INT. L.J.443 (1995) (exemplifying his sharp critique of mainstream American legal education);Allan Macurdy, Review Essay: Thinking about Rights, supra note 4 at $ 9 (arguingthat many contributors to Disability Rights missed the significance of the role thatprivate law plays in oppression as well as his point that their narrow compass riskedincreased marginality for Disability Studies).nections constituted Allan's unique strength as a student, teacher, admin-istrator, correspondent, and friend.He would not allow any of us to "deny our inter-relatedness, to suc-cumb to fear, and to cover it with oily sentiment."12 Rather, he lived andloved, and taught and learned in good company. Therefore, it is sadlyand deeply paradoxical that none of us has ever known nor ever willknow again anyone like Allan, so uniquely able to demonstrate "the lushbreadth and power of the human spirit."' 3 Allan recognized that "learn-ing actually happens through immersion in constant and complex interac-tion amongst student, teacher, and classmates."' 4 And could Allan everinteract!That said, what stands out most about Allan was his wise heart andcaring spirit. This largely explains his extraordinary success in connectingwith others. He beautifully described how his parents "taught me that myworth was measured by my care for others" and noted how his siblings"never accepted that I had limits at all."' 5 The many people who helpedhim through the years thus became much more than hired assistants, andhis mother, Sarah Macurdy, truly embodied selfless dedication throughher many years as his indefatigable champion. Most of all for Allan, hiswife Marie Trottier Macurdy was-as he said in his last article-"my lifeand my inspiration."' 6Allan's words live on throughout many jurisdictions, and one can saywith considerable confidence that what he said and wrote and did will bewidely remembered as a blessing. As Allan said when he memorializedProfessor Mary Jo Frug years ago, "though we are inconsolable, [s]hewould have us hope."From Allan's lips to ... ?12 Macurdy, Disability Ideology, supra note 11, at 457.13 Id.11 Macurdy, Rights Respiration, supra note 8, at 747.15 Macurdy, Americans with Disabilities Act, supra note 11, at 21.16 Macurdy, Rights Respiration, supra note 8, at 737 n.1.

From Your Lips to God's Ear

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From Your Lips to God's Ear

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