Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2001
Abstract
My first class as a student at Yale Law School was the first class Harry Wellington taught there. It was the Fall of 1956. The course was Contracts. Harry entered the classroom, looking no older than the students (in truth, he 'wasn't much older), but surely better dressed. He settled himself on the corner of the desk, and the magic began. Without introduction or fanfare, Harry embarked on a monologue about a magazine that kept arriving, uninvited, in his mailbox each month. He confessed to leafing through the pages from time to time, and wondered if this obligated him to pay for it. We, of course, presumed to know full well what magazine he was talking about. Playboy had begun publication just two years before, and leafing through the pages seemed a sensible strategy, at least to the 95% of us who were men. We were probably wrong, but our assumption that Playboy was the subject of inquiry fueled our interest, and Harry didn't dampen enthusiasm by making full disclosure. We discussed Harry's quandary - did he have to pay? -throughout the course. But we didn't arrive at an answer, and Harry didn't proffer one. The joy was in the inquiry, not the answer. Thus did Harry whet our appetite for the legal enterprise.
Publication Citation
45 N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 77-84 (2001)
Scholarly Commons Citation
Gottesman, Michael H., "Wellington’s Labors" (2001). Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works. 91.
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/91