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Nation: A Matter of Spirit

He was called the greatest jurist of his day, a legal eminence worthy of rank with John Marshall and Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was, in fact, a great human. And the real contribution of Judge Learned Hand, who died last week in Manhattan at 89, was less to the body of the law than to its spirit.

Learned Hand served as a federal judge longer than any other man—52 years. His opinions were prodigious, totaled more than 2,000. covering every phase of the law from maritime liens to complicated antitrust cases. His tart observations...

Quotes of the Day »

RAY KELLY, New York City Police Commissioner, on the arrest of a New Jersey man in one of the nation's most baffling missing-children cases, the disappearance more than three decades ago of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
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