Blough, Roger M.

English

Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository

ARTHUR LINTON CORBIN - A LASTING LEGACY
ROGER M. BLOUGH"
TEAcHING iS an honorable profession as Professor Corbin's years at Yale
have abundantly demonstrated. He has bequeathed to Yale Law School a
lasting legacy. As one among the many who have had the good fortune to sit at
his feet while he examined the gambits, the ambiguities and the growth of
the law of contracts, it is a personal privilege to add this word to the many,
but never too many, appreciations for his scholarship and his instruction.
The law of contracts, Professor Corbin has said, "attempts the realization
of reasonable expectations that have been induced by the making of a promise."'
At the heart of individual or group enterprise in today's world are these con-
cepts - to commit voluntarily, to be bound, and to perform reasonably. The
freedom to contract is the sime qua non of the creative innovator whose work
benefits all mankind in the free world. Builders of today and of the future
must necessarily rely on the validity of contracts and the vitality of the con-
tractual method of planning and carrying out constructive programs. This is
at once the root of voluntaryism and the means of progress.
Against this base of human experience Professor Corbin laid before young
minds the thinking that the common law "started, not with a set of noble,
consistent, simon-pure concepts and principles, but that it started at exactly
zero, just like the protoplasmic cells."2 He, thereby, set the stage for the
making of "new decisions" and the taking of "experimental and tentative
steps forward as we think that prevailing conditions of life require."3 He
understood and succeeded in conveying his invaluable understanding that law
was a living, moving aggregation of preferred human experience, highly
adaptable to human needs.
Yale Law School has been in existence about 140 years. During that time
there has been a "constant adventure in the evolution of law,' 4 and no one
in the school has gloried more in that "constant adventure" than, in his own
way, did Professor Corbin. He knew the insecurity of relying upon yester-
year's decision, upon the "principles" that were no longer the "principles."
He, more than any other, was instrumental in inaugurating the case method
of teaching at Yale Law School. He early grasped the variations and contra-
dictions of the legal rules by which our corporate and private lives are gov-
erned. It is said that he has read and analyzed more than 50,000 decisions.0
tChairman of the Board, United States Steel Corporation.
1. Quoted in Goodhart, Professor Corbin's Eightieth Birthday, 71 L.Q. REv. 201, 202
(1955).
2. Corbin, The Law School Under 10 Deans and 5 Presidents, Yale Law Report, vol.
I, no. 4, p. 11, 1955.
3. Ibid.
4. Id. at 4.
5. Goodhart, supra note 1.
THE YALE LAW JOURNAL
This is no mean task in itself. That he accomplished this prodigious work
points to his mastery of the subject of contracts - a mastery which carries
on even to his 90th year.
Through his constant study and examination of the mores of the market
place as reflected in the case law, he came to know the necessity for clearer
definitions, for more conciseness, and for all the elements of craftsmanship
involved in the processing of agreements. In the mysterious way which some
unusual teachers have of feeding the inquiring minds and at the same time
imparting the standards of their personal craftsmanship, Professor Corbin
left a lasting impression upon those fortunate enough to attend his classes.
This mysterious process through which some of the gifted, perhaps unknow-
ingly, succeed in teaching greatly, does not lend itself to exposition. It exists,
it functions, it reacts - and happily so.
Professor Corbin also learned and imparted to his students how the busi-
ness community or, more accurately, how the community's business par-
ticipates in the law-making process. He knew how the public as well as the
private interest was served by the freedom to make contracts and the free-
dom to enforce them. He did not condone every action in the market place,
just as he did not condone unwise interference with those actions. For he
realized at once the ingenuity of the human mind and the constructive nature
of that ingenuity when unhampered; while at the same time recognizing that
all actions are necessarily subject to scrutiny and to the test of public accepta-
bility.
If I may add a word of personal nature, it would be to recall the patience
and consideration with which all, even the freshest novice, were treated.
He had consideration to a rare degree for those who questioned and sought
answers, even to the point and beyond of letting it interfere with the master
work on contracts to which his energies were substantially devoted. And
one learned to realize that this patient forbearance continued reasoned and
unruffled, whether he was engaged in what he knew to be a plowing of fer-
tile fields or a grubbing of stumps.
His innovations in teaching at Yale, his evolving and enlarging contri-
butions in his field of the law, constitute a legacy for Yale, for Yale-trained
lawyers, and for his profession. But perhaps the most lasting legacy will lie
in the hearts and memories of those privileged to know him as an individual
and privileged to bask in his steadfast awareness and his love of the law.
Professor Corbin has never sought or desired approbation for doing
even so supremely well - that which was dictated by a profound sense of
obligation. But he may accept it now; for it is born of a deep sense of grati-
tude felt by those who knew him during the summit days of his lasting
contribution.
[Vol. 74 : 207 '


Arthur Linton Corbin - A Lasting Legacy

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