黛布拉·布鲁诺
2018年6月4日
It’s not an understatement to say that William Eskridge has changed American history. 事实上, one might ask which aspect of this country he has affected the most.
是将法律解释引入法学院吗, a field of study that had only been given slight and outdated attention before he wrote the groundbreaking casebook?
Or forecasting the problems in the housing bubble that led to the financial crisis in 2008?
Or helping to argue in favor of same-sex marriage in a 1996 book and a later amicus brief that served as a foundation for the 2015 U.S. 最高法院判决Obergefell v. 霍奇斯?
Any one of these achievements could easily be enough to stop a Washington name-dropping conversation dead in its tracks, 但Eskridge, 约翰·A. 耶鲁大学法学院法学教授, 承认法律并不是他的第一职业选择.
When he graduated from Davidson College with a history degree and then finished nearly all his requirements for a doctorate in history at Harvard around 1974, 他说, “博士学位市场.D. 历史学家倒塌.” And since both of his grandfathers were lawyers, he decided to go to law school. “It was basically my fallback career choice, but I had no interest in the law particularly,他说.
结果很好. 事实上, Brian Leiter’s Law School 报告 out of the University of Chicago ranked Eskridge sixth among the 10 most-cited law faculty in the United States from 2010 to 2014.
如何Eskridge, 66, 从一个年轻人到, 正如他所说, “no employable skills” to a legal star is a tale of his intelligence, 努力工作, 以及对宽容和流亡问题的学术兴趣, 这些主题使他从事了一些引人入胜的法律工作.
One of his areas of study at Harvard was the political thought of the Marian Exiles, the Protestants who fled an England ruled by the Roman Catholic Queen Mary I in the 16th century. 这项研究扩大了他对宽容的兴趣, which linked to his realization that he was a closeted gay man in college in a time when being gay was considered a mental illness and gay sexual activity was illegal in many states.
这也是他在华盛顿开始工作的另一个原因. “I could not imagine being a gay person in the rural South where I grew up,他说.
当完法律助理后，他在谢伊找了份工作 & 加德纳, where 他说 he learned about international law and statutes from some pretty unconventional clients, 包括伊朗伊斯兰共和国.
他在谢伊学到的重要一课, 他说, was learning both about procedure and “the ethical practice of law — and how you can be a successful lawyer winning cases but be super ethical.” “It does mean you have to work harder,” he adds, and probably earn less.
不过，他的最终目标是成为一名法学教授. 他被弗吉尼亚大学法学院录取. And even though 立法 and 法定解释 had been a focus of his work life in D.C.他惊讶地发现，几乎没有法学院教授这门课. He and a colleague started a course covering that subject at UVA in 1982, which then led to a book that became one of the original casebooks in that field.
这并不是他在弗吉尼亚大学唯一重要的工作. He also realized from his earlier law firm work that home sales transactions were structured in a way to pull potential homebuyers into mortgages with very little investigation into whether the buyers actually qualified to take out a mortgage. “Buyers were being induced into taking on a lot more risk than they would have if they had been thinking rationally,他说.
这是可调利率抵押贷款时代的开端, sales pressure to convince people to buy homes they could not necessarily afford, 防止大规模丧失抵押品赎回权的监管也很少, 当然, 最终发生了什么?. Eskridge tried to strike a warning, writing that consumers were taking on too much risk. He was the only legal scholar to anticipate the housing crisis, 他说.
Even with a portfolio like that, Eskridge says he was denied tenure at UVA in 1985. Part of the reason may have had to do with some of his political activity, 他说, such as his work to convince the school to end its investments in South Africa, 哪个是在种族隔离制度下运作的.
但他怀疑，部分原因是他是同性恋. (In 2009, as Congress deliberated on the pending Employment and Non-Discrimination Act, Eskridge cited in his testimony his denial of tenure at UVA as an example of discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation and gender identity. 保罗·马奥尼, 埃斯克里奇提出指控时，他是法学院院长, 埃斯克里奇并没有被剥夺终身教职, ，但被推迟到未来考虑,他的性取向并没有影响他的决定.)
Eskridge left UVA and started teaching at Georgetown University Law Center, 他在哪里表明了自己是同性恋. 事实上, he was asked by the Gay and Lesbian Attorneys of Washington (GAYLAW) to represent a gay couple in D.C. 寻求结婚的权利. He also put together a GAYLAW reading group that has been meeting continuously for more than 26 years. 回顾埃斯克里奇1996年的书, The Case for Same-Sex Marriage: From Sexual Liberty to Civilized Commitment, 理查德·波斯纳法官称埃斯克里奇是“超越时代的先知”.”
同时在乔治敦大学, Eskridge was also working with now-professor Nan Hunter on writing Sexuality, 性别, 与律法, 第一本将发展中的领域概念化的案例书. An amicus brief Eskridge wrote for the Cato Institute and a law review article were both cited in a majority opinion by the Supreme Court in the 2003 landmark case Lawrence v. 德克萨斯州，宣布双方同意的鸡奸法无效.
现在在耶鲁, 埃斯克里奇教授宪法课程, 立法, 性, 性别与法律, 法定解释, 和监管. He’s working on a book about the debate over marriage, with American women as the star.
“Women as decision makers have been the key to gay rights,他说. He feels even though the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell changed the status of marriage equality, 对话还在继续.他说，事实上，美国政府正在采取行动.S. 宪法总是处于危险之中.
