"You Remind Me of Professor Stephen Carter"
By W. F. Twyman, Jr.
Professor Stephen L. Carter
If one lives long enough, one might hear thousands, if not tens of thousands, of opinions and viewpoints, thoughts and reflections. 99% of the things we hear from others are forgotten within hours and days. For some reason, a few random statements and remarks linger through our lifetimes. We remember. And the remembrance becomes part of us. For example, I remember my Mom on her bed telling me “this is your sister” while holding a baby in her arms. That is my earliest memory. I remember my first grade teacher Mrs. Lucille Walker rapping my knuckles and telling me “we do not use that language.” I had parroted the line “Son of a Gun” from Deputy Marshal Festus on the tv show Gunsmoke. I remember being asked if I had read The Pilgrim’s Progress in the Principal’s office in the sixth grade. Now as my Dad loses his memory, I cling more closely to those off hand remarks I cannot forget. Like being told one day by a young writer I was a wise elder.
This morning, it occurred to me to share one of these random remarks long ago that I still remember. It was the most ordinary and off-hand comment at the time. And I remember it well.
The year was around 1990, although I cannot be more precise. The place was a restaurant in Arlington, Virginia near the subway stop. That I remember. My future wife and I were dating. Her friend from Yale was in town, so we all decided to get together. I think the dinner served a dual function for S. She wanted to catch up with her friend and show off her boyfriend to her visiting friend. Kill two birds with one stone.
I met the friend and discovered she had graduated from the law school in New Haven. She had clerked for a federal judge in, of all places, Fresno, California. Fresno was not New Haven by a long shot. S. and I were regaled with tales about the town off of the beaten path and the judge and life as a judicial clerk. I asked questions in my curious way. I was only five or so years out of Harvard Law School, so I could relate to the friend’s experiences.
All of a sudden and with a smooth perception, the friend halted what she was saying. She paused for a moment as if putting pieces of a puzzle together. “You Remind Me of Professor Stephen Carter.” That was all she said. She had no idea I would remember those words 35 years later this morning.
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Who is Professor Stephen L. Carter?
Professor Carter is one of my intellectual heroes. The grandson of a prominent lawyer in New York City and the son of a lawyer, Carter grew up in an affluent neighborhood in Northwest Washington, D.C. before graduating from Ithaca High School in upstate New York. One of few blacks in his high school, he was a driven student leader and knew he was considered a “Best Black.” After a major in history from Stanford University, Carter applied to Harvard and Yale for law school. I believe Carter neglected to mention he was black on his Harvard application which caused some consternation. Yale did not care about whether Carter declared his race or not, so Carter chose Yale Law School where he excelled and served as a note editor on the Yale Law Journal.
Carter clerked for Judge Spottswood W. Robinson III on the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Judge Robinson is someone I revere in the annals of black legal history. Robinson earned the highest academic record in the history of Howard Law School. A native of Richmond, Virginia, I worked at Robinson’s old law firm in downtown Richmond, Hill Tucker and Marsh, as a paralegal in college.
Carter then clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, another graduate of Howard Law School and classmate of Oliver Hill, the name partner at Hill, Tucker and Marsh. Overlapping relationships for sure.
After his clerkships, Carter joined the faculty at Yale where he became tenured.
I remember meeting Professor Carter at an event sponsored by the Black Law Students Association (BLSA) at Harvard Law School. Carter thrilled me with his life story of the intellect and academic life. I felt multiple layers of connections — best black in suburban public school, history major, Judge Robinson, Justice Marshall (whose son was my classmate at the University of Virginia), teaching, research. After his lecture was over, I nervously approached and shook Carter’s hand. I had spent minutes during his address thinking about what I would say when I shook his hand? What connection would seem most insightful and memorable? I concluded that the link to Judge Robinson was most memorable. I shared as I shook Carter’s hand that I had worked for Robinson’s old law firm in Richmond. Carter remarked that Robinson worked around the clock. This aligned with my internship for Judge A. Leon Higginbotham who worked around the clock as well, probably to the detriment of his health. I remember Judge Higginbotham would take his blood pressure readings while in his private chambers.
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When I worked at the Big Deal law firm on Park Avenue, I was absolutely bored. I would wander through the library and read interesting books and articles. I will never forget reading a profile of Professor Carter in The American Lawyer. I felt so inspired and energized as I read about his career. But the paragraph that stuck out for me was this. Carter remembered working at a law firm but wandering through the law firm library and reading law books. That was me! That was me! We were kindred spirits. That moment of epiphany led me to become a law professor one day well into the future, just like Carter.
Once I was a law professor, I was tasked with writing law review articles. I loved the dormant Commerce Clause. Critical Race Theory never appealed to me so much. I was drawn to the structure of the U.S. Constitution and how Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 factored into the development of constructional doctrine. Professor Carter was also a Constitutional Law professor like me. I discovered his article Constitutional Adjudication and the Indeterminate Text: A Preliminary Defense of An Imperfect Muddle, 94 Yale L. J. 859 (1984-1985).
I found intellectual alignment in the words of Professor Carter.
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When I met S.’s friend from Yale Law School, the friend knew nothing of my back ground and Professor Carter. I was just some nice (handsome) guy who worked on Capitol Hill, S.’s boyfriend from Harvard Law School. Isn’t it almost spiritual how in a moment during an otherwise uneventful and long forgotten dinner, the friend sized me up and observed “You Remind Me of Professor Stephen Carter.”
Something to consider as we live our lives. We never know when insights will last a lifetime.
Conclusion: Whenever I visit New Haven, I am drawn to the law school. I dutifully drag my wife and daughter along. They indulge me as I take the obligatory picture outside the sign for the law school. It is hard to explain why I feel meaning, and purpose, at law schools. I just do.
