Essay by Grover Joseph Rees III
The legal philosophy of Albert Tate, as every casual observer knew, was derived in equal parts from Earl Warren, Earl Long, and Francis of Assisi. Yet an examination of Judge Tate's own efforts to define and defend his beliefs generates, as such examinations tend to do, a longer list. Roscoe Pound and Benjamin Cardozo, Karl Llewellyn and Francois Gény are listed not as shadowy sources of inspiration and quotation, but as people whose ideas Tate understood and took seriously.
Although this Essay now has reached the requisite point for the observation that its subject was a remarkable man and although I do not intend to shirk this responsibility, it should be observed that there is nothing very remarkable about Tate's having been influenced by all of the people just mentioned. Every judge and lawyer in America today, whether he knows it or not, has been influenced by all of them except perhaps Gény and St. Francis. Nor is it even surprising that Tate developed a coherent synthesis of these men's ideas, for their ideas were not far apart. What is remarkable is that he seems actually to have read them.
About the Author
Grover Joseph Rees III. Chief Justice, High Court of American Samoa. B.A., Yale University, 1975; J.D., Louisiana State University, 1978. The author was a law clerk to Judge Tate in 1978 and 1979.
Citation
61 Tul. L. Rev. 721 (1987)