Dedication by Paul R. Baier
[K]nowing that when one's work is done, generally there is someone, sooner or later, who sees the aim and judges the success.
There is a glimpse of the universal in the particular of John Dixon's life—both as a man and as a judge. Beauty in life and truth in law achieve a measure of objectivity through the spartan example of Louisiana's great and good chief justice and son, John Allen Dixon, Jr., running aside his life's companion Imogene in the rosy dawn of the French Quarter, later struggling in chambers “to infuse justice in the relationship between the State . . . and the private person.”
As a ninth grader at Fair Park High School in Shreveport, John Dixon worked with his hands and measuring tools to square a block of walnut—“Six inches long, four inches wide, one inch thick.” He experienced “the sweet smell of fresh wood being worked”—these are his own words—and learned the lesson of working with one's hands. “If a man who works with his hands is injured, he goes hungry,” the Judge told me in chambers. “I approach a workman's compensation case from the point of view of a man who has been injured.” I hear an echo of Mr. Berry's shop class in Justice Dixon's opinion for this Court, restoring money damages insensitively cut by a lower court from a man who had lost an eye. The case is Walker v. Champion. Listen to the voice of Justice Dixon and hear the echo for yourself:
Plaintiff dropped out of school when he finished the ninth grade. . . .
. . . .
. . . Terry Davis' employability is now limited because of the loss of his eye. It is even more limited because he is suited only for unskilled labor . . . .
. . . .
The inconvenience of an artificial eye is no small matter. It must be removed each morning and washed to remove the body fluids that accumulate on it.
Only a judge of supreme sympathy for the common man and of the leanest prose could write these lines. Thus the rough edges of life are smoothed down by the plane of the law in the hands of a judge who likes woodworking.
About the Author
Paul R. Baier. Professor of Law, Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University, and Scholar in Residence, Louisiana Bar Foundation. J.D. 1969, Harvard Law School; Judicial Fellow, Supreme Court of the United States, 1975-1976.
Citation
65 Tul. L. Rev. 1 (1990)