Some Thoughts on Yale and Guido
2014; Duke University School of Law; Volume: 77; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1945-2322
Autores Tópico(s)Italian Fascism and Post-war Society
ResumoHow did Guido Calabresi come to write his first article, Some Thoughts on Risk Distribution and the Law of Torts (Some Thoughts)? (1) Out of respect for his own unique style, refer to him by his first name as try to answer that question here, something usually avoid doing even when writing about historical figures as children, lest sound overly familiar. My focus is on Yale's influence on Guido's work. As any historian will acknowledge, decoding impact is a risky business. Asked what was most important about his legal education, Guido himself attested, immediately blurted out an answer: I am a refugee! And of course, how can not have been influenced by the fact that we were antifascists and that we left Italy because my father had been jailed and beaten in 1923 and he was a democrat with a small d; that we were very, very rich there and came here with nothing because it was against the law [to take money out of Italy] under penalty of death. (2) Here is someone who arrived in Manhattan on September 16,1939 at the age of six, knowing but three English words--yes, no, and briefcase!--who was bullied by his New York classmates, and who became an outsider in old New Haven by virtue of his Jewish ancestry, identification with Catholics, and the vowel at the end of his first and last name. (3) Perhaps instead of looking to Yale, should devote greater attention to Guido's flight from Italy. But although cannot say that Yale explains Some Thoughts, can point to some ways in which the Blue Mother may have influenced Guido's first major work, raise some questions about proverbial roads not taken, and consider the implications of Some Thoughts for both law and economics and Guido's Yale Law School deanship. II One semester after Guido crossed the ocean between Milan and Manhattan, New Haven and Yale claimed him. His mother, Bianca Maria Finzi-Contini Calabresi, earned a Ph.D. in French at Yale. (4) She became a professor of French and Italian at Connecticut College, then professor and chair of the Italian Department at Albertus Magnus College. (5) Guido's father, Massimo, who had helped publish and distribute the newspaper of the resistance movement, Non Mollare, (6) had been an associate professor at the University of Milan and had been denied a promised promotion to full professor when the Fascists blocked it. (7) Yale awarded him a research fellowship in internal medicine in 1940, and he broadcast the message that many Italians opposed fascism. (8) Massimo Calabresi became chief cardiologist at West Haven V.A. Hospital and a member of the Yale Medical School faculty. Like his wife, he received a doctorate from Yale. His was in public health. Young Guido had contact with the law school as well. He first spoke English outside his home with the daughter of Yale law professor James William Moore. He attended day camp with his future Yale Law Journal editor-in-chief, Stephen Shulman, whose father, a professor at Yale Law School, would later become its first Jewish dean. (9) The exodus of New Haven's affluent young for prep school enabled Guido to follow the well-trodden path of the local elite. As he was finishing Worthington Hooker Elementary School, Foote School was replenishing its male contingent by raiding the public-school system. A scholarship sent Guido to Foote, where he had excellent teachers who lacked other career options because they had married Yale professors. (10) After Foote, Guido, like his older brother, Paul, enrolled at the venerable, all-male Hopkins Grammar School. Guido worked his way through Hopkins on a scholarship and loved it. (11) He again followed his brother to Yale's Timothy Dwight College, which at that time attracted those concerned with public policy, including Kingman Brewster and Lowell Weicker. (12) Guido received his B.S. in economics summa cum laude in 1953. At Yale, he worked with the legendary Keynesian, James Tobin, but he took Economics 10, the introductory course, from Warren Nutter, a founder of the Virginia school of political economy. …
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