The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

duMB And duMped 23
ing the switchboard. He was also a waiter at the Men’s Faculty Club,
which meant he could eat for free. Before Christmas vacation, he found
yet another job as a temp at the New York Post Office.
Columbia generously granted him 27 hours of credits for his first year
at Northwestern but Gorton was disappointed to learn he had to take Civil
Procedure One all over again with the first-year students. At Columbia,
however, it was largely a course in logic taught by a brilliant sage, Jerome
Michael, Columbia Law School Class of 1912. On the first day of class in
1951, Gorton immediately deduced that Professor Michael had subjected
his pupils to the same catechism for decades. The professor bowed his
head and scanned the list of some 200 students until, aha, he found the
one with the most unusual name.
“Mr. Hamburger!”
Hamburger dutifully arose.
“Mr. Hamburger, have you read the cases assigned for this, your first
day of class?”
“Yes sir.”
“Very good. And would you give me the name of the first case you were
assigned to read?”
“Jones vs. the Acme Loan Company, sir.”
“Very good, Mr. Hamburger. And would you tell me who the plaintiff
was in that case?”
“Jones, sir.”
“Very good, Mr. Hamburger. And would you tell me how you know
Jones was the plaintiff?”
The silence was deafening. For 20 years or more, Slade learned later,
the professor invariably had been told, “Because Jones’ name was listed
first.” That’s the wrong answer. The appellant, in fact, is the party who
files the appeal—the loser of the original trial.
Hamburger paused for a moment to study his notes, then looked up
with a beatific smile: “Because, sir, in the second paragraph in the opinion
it says ‘the plaintiff’s mother,’ and everyone knows that loan companies
don’t have mothers.”
Professor Michael could do little but nod. Hamburger was the man of
the hour. “It was a wonderful first day in law school at Columbia!” Slade
says, laughing at the still vibrant 60–year-old memory.
By the neXt suMMeR, Gorton had acquired a foxy, ambitious new girlfriend,
Virginia Craft—“Crafty Ginny” to Slade and his pals—and an internship
at Ropes & Gray, Boston’s oldest and most prestigious law firm.