Professor John Hurlbut is on leave from Stanford Law School this pre-retirement year, teaching at Hastings College of the Law, University of California, and will continue teaching there following his formal retirement from Stanford. Last spring the students in his Evidence class planned a party for their last class hour. The Silver Fox was one step ahead, however, and terminated the class one hour early. Frantic telephone calls, and an “urgent meeting” requiring his presence at the School produced Professor Hurlbut in 161J in time for a skit and presentation of a silver fox, shown in the picture.

John Bingham Hurlbut was born in Wisconsin in 1906 and received an A.B. in political science from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1928. He earned an M.A. in political science (1929) and an LL.B. (1934) from Stanford. He practiced law in Los Angeles from 1934 to 1937, hen he joined the Stanford Law faculty as associate professor. He was promoted to full professor in 1942, and served as assistant dean in 1941-42 and again in 1945-46. From 1942 to 1945 he was on leave for service in the United States Navy. In 1959 he was named Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law. During 1960-61 Professor Hurlbut was Fulbright lecturer in law at the University of Tokyo and at the Japanese Supreme Court’s Legal Training Research Institute. Mr. Hurlbut has served as Stanford’s faculty athletic representative with the Pacific Coast Athletic Conference and as vice-president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. His principal subjects at the Law School have been Evidence, Contracts and Domestic Relations.

Chosen to be Commencement speaker by the Class of 1970, Professor Hurlbut quoted from a yellow Wisconsin village weekly as it reported the remarks of a Memorial Day 1930 speaker – “a typical Stanford Law student of 40 years ago as he then pondered the state of the nation,” in Mr. Hurlbut’s words. The following phrases in quotation marks are those from the Wisconsin weekly as they appeared in Professor Hurlbut’s text of last June.

“The danger signs of political, economic, social, and spiritual disease in our body politic are plain to be seen,” he says, and “just as we cannot sweeten the sea with a few lumps of sugar, so we cannot cure these ills by pleasing platitudes.” What it takes is recognition, followed by hard study and hard work.

But, he says, “far too often he who points to our ills, he who sees beyond Today, hissed and branded a radical.” And “Just as when the first amoeba crawled forth from the mass of its fellows and the crowd clutched at his throat to draw him back to their own level, just so the cry of ‘Radical, Radical’ follows those of each generation who seek to lead humanity to higher, cleaner, more righteous levels.” “Know you well,” he adds, “that the words of the radical too often paint a vision true.”

“No nation,” he says, “has ever had a more glorious and righteous a past, but the pages of history dramatically remind us that many a noble Yesterday and Today has been buried in an ignoble Tomorrow” – and he wonders whether disintegration and decay is inevitable because of the avarice of the few, the fanaticism of the few and the apathy of the many.

“Let us not dwell in the past,” he urges, “nor be the Revolutionary who would destroy the good and the bad alike (with no substitute blue print in mind), but rather the New Liberal who with the good of the past and the promising of the present, builds a better Tomorrow.”…

So it seemed to that Stanford law student on 30 May, 1930. Whether the problems he saw were real or imaginary, whether he was long on questions and short on answers, whether he covered too many bases, whether his cerebration was side-racked by purple rhetoric, and similar questions, I leave to you.

And, if in this account you detect a bit of satire directed at John Hurlbut  of 40 years ago, you are on target.

1930, 1970-our problems do seem ageless and endless. New problems, old problems, new problems created by solutions to old problems. Each generation desperately strives to be adequate to the needs of its children, to the needs of Tomorrow. Some successes, some failures, many advances, some retreats.

Of one thing I am quite sure. The contemporary university student and the contemporary university teacher did not invent or discover what is called “social consciousness,” “social awareness.” The typical Stanford lawyer has always had it whether he dwelt in the big city or in the alley town, whether he was in practice, on the Bench, in Government, or in business, and he had it quietly and when there were no fashions in social awareness. One of my vintage never ceases to be thrilled when he contemplates the achievements on behalf of his fellow men of the Stanford lawyer citizen as a social and political architect. And you will carry on that tradition. But my impression is that the most productive of those Stanford lawyer citizens have striven hard to be high grade professionals first, social and political architects second.

Writing in the November issue of the Stanford Law Review, dedicated to John Bingham Hurlbut, William T. Lake ’68, a former student, said, “… Professor Hurlbut had completely mastered the socratic method of teaching. Like few others, he had learned to marshal that often unwieldy tool and make it accomplish his purposes. He dispatched his trenchant questions seemingly without mercy, but with consistent skill at bringing forth answers that related intelligently to the problem at hand…. Professor Hurlbut has served Stanford during a period of growing educational ferment, when his ability to enlist the students’ attention and affection was especially valuable. His impending retirement is well-earned, and his student-friends from 34 years of teaching wish him the best.”

Judge Shirley Hufstedler reminisced on another aspect of John Hurlbut’s teaching at the annual Stanford luncheon during the State Bar Convention last September. She remembers her first exposure to John Hurlbut, “a dashing young man, poised on the dais-well, almost poised. Actually John was cantilevered.”

A former colleague, Harold Shepherd, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Emeritus, began his tribute in the November Law Review:

“Brilliant student, inspired and inspiring teacher, and one of the gentlest and kindest of men – around these qualities are built John Hurlbut’s enduring contributions to the Stanford Law School and the legal profession.”