Guido’s Religious Egalitarianism - Redburn on "Outside In: The Oral History of Guido Calabresi
This post, by Kate Redburn , is the seventh in a series of posts in which legal historians reflect on Outside In: The Oral History of Guido Calabresi (Oxford University Press), by Norman I. Silber . Redburn is currently an Academic Fellow at Columbia Law School. Guido Calabresi is famous for his transformative scholarship on torts, his leadership as dean of Yale Law School, and his tenure on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. But above and beyond those accolades, Guido defines himself as an outsider, “a Catholic Jewish Italian,” (OI, v.1, 104) “an immigrant, and a refugee” (OI, v1, 1). In this post, I want to suggest that the religious dimension of Guido’s outsider experience is reflected in his famous majority opinion in Galloway v. Town of Greece . Normally I would be hesitant to read the personal biography so directly into judicial philosophy, but Outside In encourages it. Readers can’t help but see the conversation between volume one, a narrative oral history of Guido’s childh...
