A Sad Day: John Hart Ely Dies at 65

His book, Democracy and Distrust was likely THE most important book on constitutional law written in the 1980s, and remains a central part of the Con Law curriculum until even today. I don’t agree with his conclusions for a variety of reasons, but the book was brilliant. I was even more impressed by him when I learned he left Stanford to take a job at the law school at Miami so it would be easier to go scuba diving. As a measure of my respect for him (and, also the extraordinary nerdiness I exhibited in law school), I remember searching the walls of a restaurant near my law school for a business card he was said to have pinned to the wall 10 years previously, when he was a visiting professor. His death is a great loss.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 4:23 PM