Herbert Wechsler

Herbert Wechsler (1909–2000) was a legal scholar and former director of the American Law Institute (ALI). He is most widely known for his constitutional law scholarship and for the creation of the Model Penal Code.

Education and early career

Wechsler entered City College of New York at the age of 15 and graduated at age 18.Fact|date=September 2007 He enrolled at Columbia Law School, and served as editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review at age 20. He graduated in 1931. After graduation he joined the faculty, then took a one year leave to clerk for Justice Stone of the U.S. Supreme Court.cite web|url=http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/your_columbians/herbert_wechsler.html|title=C250 Celebrates Your Columbians: Herbert Wechsler|publisher=Columbia University|author=Rudy Carmenaty|date=2004|accessdate=2007-09-16] cite web|url=http://www.ali.org/ali/R2204_Wechsler.htm|title=Herbert Wechsler|publisher=ALI Reporter|date=Summer 2000|accessdate=2007-09-16]

Career

In 1940, Wechsler went to Washington D.C. to work for the Justice Department. He argued five cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court during that period.Fact|date=September 2007 Among these, he took part in arguing "Korematsu v. United States", as Assistant Attorney General, on the side of the United States government in its wartime internment of citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry. [Brief for the United States, 1944 WL 42850 (U.S.), No. 22., October Term, 1944, p. 59.] After World War II, Wechsler served as assistant attorney general in charge of the War Division during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals from 1944 to 1946. He then returned to Columbia, where he remained an active professor until 1978 and then took emeritus status.

In 1959, Wechsler delivered his Holmes lecture at Harvard Law School entitled "Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law". It was also around this time that Wechsler authored a number of casebooks that changed ideas about criminal law and the federal courts. In 1963, Wechsler's proposed official draft of the Model Penal Code was approved, bringing to a close a decade-long project at the American Law Institute. His wife, Doris Wechsler, has noted that he considered the Model Code to be his greatest achievement. Shortly after the approval of the Model Code, Wechsler was named director of the Institute, a position which he held until 1984.

In 1964, Wechsler argued the seminal case "New York Times v. Sullivan" in front of the Supreme Court. Justice Brennan, writing for a unanimous Court, held that the First and Fourteenth Amendments barred awards of damages to a public official for defamation relating to his official conduct unless he proves "actual malice."cite book|last=Abrams|first=Floyd|title=Speaking Freely|publisher=Viking Press|year=2005|page=4]

During his tenure as director of the American Law Institute completed the second restatement of the Conflict of Laws, Contracts, Judgments, and Torts, as well as the original restatement of Foreign Relations Law of the United States and large parts of the Second Restatement of Property. The Institute also conducted various studies in federal taxation and completed the Federal Securities Code, the Model Land Development Code, the Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure, the Study of the Division of Jurisdiction Between State and Federal Courts, and made major revisions to the Uniform Commercial Code. The ALI's Principles of Corporate Governance and the current Restatement of Foreign Relations Law of the United States were also conceived, initiated, and developed under his direction.

Following his retirement as director of the ALI in 1984, Wechsler remained active in the Institute's activities as a member of the council until his death in 2000.

Awards

In 1993, Wechsler became the third recipient of the American Law Institute's Henry J. Friendly Medal for "outstanding achievement in promoting reform and clarification of the law" and for the way that his "outstanding intelligence, integrity, and devotion to the law ... enriched the subjects of Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, and Federal Jurisdiction, as well as legal thinking generally."

References