One of my biggest regrets is that I never met Stephen F. Williams, a judge in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. He and I carried on a number of lively discussions on email starting in 2007. (It might have started a few years earlier.) I had planned to see him on a May trip to D.C. this year, but of course that trip was cancelled. And now he is gone. He died of COVID-19.
This evening I reread all of my emails with him and it made me realize how many things we discussed. The discussions were always good, even when we disagreed, and we often agreed. Also they often went more than one round each.
In recent years, we discussed income inequality, the pros and cons of impeaching Trump, Trump’s overall record, whether there was effectively a quid pro quo in Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, net neutrality, and whether he should self-publish his latest book. He sometimes commented on various pieces he had seen by me and my reply led to further discussion.
There were also lighter topics: my telling him that at age 69, I planned to work another 10 years, his telling me that I should make it 20 more, and me saying it’s a deal.
We also talked on the phone a few times.
The way we got to know each other about 15 years ago is a little hazy. It was one of two ways, but either way it involved a draft of his 2006 book on the Russian economy pre-Communism. My wife, Rena Henderson, who edits economists, edited the book for Hoover Press. Either she asked his permission to share sections with me to help her understand some of the economics (she makes sure she doesn’t share her work with me because of potential conflicts of interest), or someone at Hoover Press asked me to look at it. Either way, I was impressed with his work.
Months after that I read a decision he had written for the D.C. Circuit and liked not only his decision and the reasoning that got him there, but also the clarity of his writing. So I wrote him a fan letter, and he responded positively. I don’t have the letter because my computer and back-up hard drive burned in my February 2007 fire. But I have all our correspondence since that time.
I’m still impressed that a man who was on arguably the second most important federal court in America put on no airs and let his intellectual curiosity be his dominant characteristic.
READER COMMENTS
Deirdre Nansen McCloskey
Aug 10 2020 at 5:01pm
What a loss. I’ve known Steve since in the 1970s he took my price theory course at the University of Chicago–the fact shows the kind of scholar he was: University of Colorado law professor takes a term off to think (and do the quite onerous homework). I did not know of his expertise in Russian history until I read his brilliant manuscript a few years ago about a pre-1917 liberal. His point was that Russia could have gone another way. Steve always had a point—fact-based, intelligent, humane, witty. Would that we had more of him.
David Henderson
Aug 10 2020 at 7:20pm
Wow! Thanks, Deirdre. I had no idea he had taken your course. That explains the amazing understanding he had of economics. Thanks for teaching him.
David Seltzer
Aug 11 2020 at 6:05pm
David, Wonderful personal eulogy. Your comment about his curiosity and Deirdre Nansen McCloskey’s recollection beautifully comport with the late Harry Robert’s definition of an intellectual. To wit. A person who is skeptical and doggedly curious.
Basil Carmody
Aug 13 2020 at 4:16pm
Steve and I met each other in an English Literature seminar in our College (Pierson) at Yale. He was, of course, far and above the most brilliant member.
We discovered each other again some 12 -15 years ago as classic European liberals, he in the U.S. and I in France.
Most recently, he was avid in wanting to understand the Yellow Jacket movement in France.
It was only during the past year that he formally ended his judicial work. He had barely begun to reflect on what he would do in his retirement.
What a beautiful person he was.
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