Monroe H. Freedman

John T. Noonan, Jr.: Exemplar of Ethical Conduct

As his classmate and friend since our first year in law school more than forty years ago, I have admired John Noonan for his gentle personality, his keen intellect, and his strength of character. He is an exemplar of ethical conduct, as a person and as a judge. Judge Noonan presented a significant part of his philosophy of law, lawyers, and judges in his Holmes Lecture at Harvard Law School in 1972. The lecture was later published as a book, Persons and Masks of the Law , and it stands as one of the most significant essays that has been written about the legal profession. In Persons and Masks of the Law , Judge Noonan warns of the tendency of lawyers and judges to make a Golden Calf of abstract rules of law. He states, “Fascination with rules may mean obeisance to force or the delusion of having mastered force. It may also lead to a veritably religious veneration for the rules and their imagined author. The sovereign and his command may be deified.” When this scenario occurs, the rules become masks that disguise the humanity of those affected by the law. The effect of this occurrence is to permit lawyers and judges to engage more readily in conduct that is injurious to other persons—conduct that they would otherwise recognize as evil.