Norman Dorsen, Colin Bruce, and mortality

One thing that happens as you get old is that the world is increasingly populated by ghosts.

I graduated NYU Law School in 1970. It puts out a yearly magazine, that’s gotten glitzier over the years as the school has grown in stature. Mainly I’ve enjoyed seeing in it news and photos of people I’d known, sometimes classmates, mostly professors. But gradually they have faded away (presaging my own future); the magazine became full of strangers. Yet one face I could always still count on seeing was the eternal, ubiquitous Norman Dorsen.

He was my constitutional law professor. When I opened the latest magazine, I found a full page photo of Norman Dorsen. Because he had died.

My NYU professors were not faceless anodynes; they included some powerful, dynamic personalities I still remember vividly. But even among them Dorsen was a monumental figure. Though never its actual dean, Dorsen came to be the school’s embodiment, and central to its mentioned escalation in stature over the decades.

Fonda as inmate Gideon, preparing to mail his petition to the Supreme Court

He had co-written the Army’s legal brief relating to the Army-McCarthy hearings. He also wrote a brief in Gideon v. Wainwright (Henry Fonda played Gideon in the movie; it still gooses my emotions); in the Nixon tapes case; and helped write one in Roe v. Wade. He was president of the ACLU; and director of NYU’s Civil Liberties Program for 56 years.

Under Dorsen’s leadership, in 1977, the ACLU took one of its most controversial stances: backing the right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois. Dorsen considered this a civil liberties litmus test. (I too am an absolutist on freedom of expression.)

Norman Dorsen

Norman Dorsen was a man of rigor and seriousness. One episode sticks strangely in my memory. Law school classes were mainly socratic dialogs analyzing past actual cases. But with grades based solely on the final exam, students were often lax about class discussion. One day Dorsen began the session and quizzed a student, who couldn’t answer. After one or two others weren’t prepared either, Dorsen, visibly pissed off, simply closed his book and walked out.

The only such instance in my law school career. Gosh, almost half a century ago.

The same magazine also has a smaller obit for George Zeitlin, my tax law professor.

Colin Bruce

And the same day’s mail brought World Coin News with Colin Bruce’s. I don’t recall meeting in person but we corresponded over decades. Colin too was a living landmark. He’d been responsible for creating The Standard Catalog of World Coins in 1972. Non-collectors can’t appreciate this. But previously, evaluating foreign coins was mostly guesswork. What a blessing to have listings for every country in one (large!) book. Thank you, Colin Bruce.

Pricing accuracy was still always problematical. And sadly, after Colin retired, the catalog went downhill, accumulating errors and stupidities that never were corrected. Finally I published a broadside detailing the problems — with no response — and resolved to boycott further annual editions. This will make my coin dealing harder. The only consolation is that it won’t be that much longer.

Time was, my life stretching ahead felt so long it might as well have been forever. Now the end feels so near it might as well be tomorrow.