One of the people mentioned in the previous Ken Burns piece I linked is Learned Hand, a U.S. judge I’ve never heard of before. I checked him out on the Wikipedias. Turns out that, in addition to having an amazing, amazing name, this guy was a bit of a badass:
Department of Justice worker Judith Coplon had been sentenced to 15 years in prison for stealing and attempting to pass on defense information. In 1950, her appeal came before a Second Circuit panel that included Learned Hand. It rested on her claim that her rights under the Fourth Amendment had been infringed by a warrantless search, and that details of illegal wiretaps had not been fully disclosed at her trial. Hand made it clear that Coplon was guilty of the charges. However, he rejected the trial judge’s conclusion that a warrantless arrest had been justified. He ruled therefore that papers seized during the arrest had been inadmissible as evidence. The trial judge’s failure to disclose all the wiretap records, Hand concluded, made a reversal of Coplon’s conviction necessary. In his written opinion, Hand stated that “[F]ew weapons in the arsenal of freedom are more useful than the power to compel a government to disclose the evidence on which it seeks to forfeit the liberty of its citizens.”
And a softie:
Legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin recalls that Hand, scrupulous about public economy, used to turn out the lights in all the offices at the end of each day. For the same reason, he refused Dworkin the customary month’s paid vacation at the end of his service. Shortly afterward, to Dworkin’s surprise, Hand wrote him a personal check for an extra month’s pay as a wedding present.
But mainly a badass:
Hand had a habit of turning his seat 180° on lawyers whose arguments annoyed him…