UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA SCHOOLOF LAW
Daniel J. meador
James Monroe Professor of Law Emeritus [itals.]

January 17, 1996

Mr. Ronald P. Sokol
14. rue Principale – B.P.3
13540 Puyricard
FRANCE

Dear Ron:

Let me begin with profound apologies for not having responded sooner to your last letter, not to
mention the earlier one. Apart from the usual procrastination and routine distractions, there are some substantial reasons. In October I went to Spain for about 18 days, traveling through most of the historic cities with a group in the hands of a retired University of Virginia Romance Language professor who kept us under a constant barrage of lectures about Spanish history and culture. In November I was called upon to give a talk at a memorial service at Columbia for my longtime friend and associate, Maurice Rosenberg, who had died in August. In December I went down for about 8 days with some virus-like condition. Just as I was getting back on my feet from that, we were hit with the Christmas holidays. With that behind, all of my assistants went
down variously with flu and colds. That staff wipe out was followed by 22 inches of snow which closed everything down for most of a work week. For a while, nothing moved. I think I have had a glimpse of how things will be on the last day when the world is shutting down.

In any event, I am now back in business. First, let me say that your October letter about the Dillard book was much appreciated. Indeed, you give it far more praise than it had occurred to me that it would be worth. Your letter, however, does reassure me that the project was worth undertaking. As for a special leather bound edition, I had urged early on that the book be done in a first class hard cover style, but financial considerations precluded that. I have passed your letter along to the Law School Foundation and to the Dean, with a cover memo suggesting that the time might come when some special edition of the sort you describe might be in order. I myself endorse your idea, but I do not look for anything to come of it for at least some time. Incidentally, your story of your interview with Dillard before you came to law school is an excellent addition to my stock of Dillard stories. It would have been good to include somewhere in the sketch if I had known of it. It fits so well with the general make up of the man.

Now as to your more recent letter concerning the idea of doing a piece on a French appellate court, I think that it is well worth doing, and I believe that it could find a publishing outlet in the states. I may be biased because of my own special interests in appellate matters, but there is so little available in English on matters of that sort that I think it would be a significant contribution. Over the last fifteen to twenty years we have had a proliferation of journals published in the law schools on the subject of comparative law, foreign law, and international law. At the moment, I do not have a list available, but I would be glad in due course to have a student assistant compile such and send it to you. My guess is that you would be able to place your piece in one of those without great difficulty. Let me know if you would like me to assemble a list of these.
In the meantime, I encourage you to proceed with the article, bearing in mind, of course, that your readership will be American.

580 Massie Road • Charlottesville, Virginia 22903-1789 • 804.924.3947 • FAX 804.924.7536 • djm6f@ virginia.edu

[end of page 1]

Mr. Ronald P. Sokol
January 17, 1996
Page Two

Inasmuch as you now have a “pad” in London and are spending time there, it occurs to me that you might find the enclosed article to be of interest. I think the writer exaggerates somewhat the class distinctions in the English bar. My own experience in that setting, which is fairly considerable over a period of years, suggests that it is more egalitarian and open to persons of all sorts than this article suggests. Sir George Coldstream, permanent secretary in the Lord Chancellor’s office, once commented to me, “the class system is only a pale reflection of what it used to be.”

I have a rather full agenda between now and summer. I am due to give talks at three conferences—one in California later this month, one in Washington in March, and one in Florida in April. The first two concern appellate courts, the third with the federal district courts. I am also undertaking to edit for publication a set of papers presented at a conference here on the Korean War. In addition, I am struggling along with another novel, with the usual lack of confidence that I can pull it off. I had imagined that it would be easier doing a second one than the first one, but that is turning out not to be the case.

A book that you might find interesting is Gerald Gunther’s biography of Learned Hand, published about a year and a half ago. It is a huge book, but is a splendid example of judicial biography. There are times when it devotes more time and presents more details than one might really want to know about Hand, but all in all it is truely a first class piece of scholarship and lives up to its subtitle, “The Man and the Judge.” Gerry was law clerk to Chief Justice Warren the same year that I was clerk to Justice Black, so I came to know him fairly well back then. I have been aware that he has been at work on this project for over 20 years. It is difficult to comprehend the amount of time and effort that went into this work.

With the snow melting, life is now getting back to normal. There is nothing particularly to report of a dramatic nature. I hope all goes well with you. Keep me posted on your piece on the appellate court in Aix.
With best wishes,

Sincerely,

Daniel J. Meador

DJM/ebg

Enclosure

P.S. Whatever happened with the Cambodian project? I had the impression last summer that someone from the Washington office had called you about it. The people seem interested in engaging your services.