It's not often that you are faced with the death of someone who was both a model and a mentor, a judge and a natural leader. For me, that was the late Chief Judge William C. Pryor, who passed away last Thursday at 88. At the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, where I was privileged to work when Judge Pryor was the Chief Judge, he was the effective man i n the middle, calming the judicial waters after the court had almost torn itself apart with personalities clashing.
As a judge, he brought to the appellate bench the skills and the attitude of a good trial judge, basing his decisions as much as possible on the facts with scrupulous impartiality. He was soft-spoken yet firm when he reached a conclusion. And although he had no particular liking for administration, he led the court system in D.C. effectively through cooperation with Chief Judge Fred Ugast of D.C.'s Superior Court, the trial court. During the decade I spent at the court, that kind of collaboration hadn't occurred before him and did not exist after he stepped down.
So often it happens that the most effective leader is the one who does not seek the position but accepts the responsibility. By proceeding calmly but firmly, he earned the respect of contentious judges on both the appeals and trial courts. He took no pleasure from ceremonial or social occasions--often, he would approach me during some get-together at the court or with the bar to ask if I wanted to go for a run with him.
The testimonials in the media from a deceased judge's law clerks are invariably totally laudatory and also completely predictable. But everyone on the staff at the court appreciated how he would treat them as full colleagues. And although he focused on the evidence in criminal cases, never succumbing to demands for either excessive leniency or firmness, he often was hailed by men whom we ran by during jogs in D.C. After one such greeting, he remarked to me that he had sentenced the man to a term of several years.
He grew up in the District, starting segregated public schools. He was a good athlete, especially at basketball and tennis, and worked out for most of his life. He would chuckle at remembering that he had been recruited by Dartmouth where it had been assumed he was a good football player but which he hadn't played. He loved basketball and blamed his bad knees on playing on concrete courts growing up.
After Dartmouth and Georgetown Law, he took a Master's in Judicial Studies at the University of Virginia with my former boss, Prof. Dan Meador. Unlike many judicial education courses, this one was demanding and rigorous. He was not prone to parading his education. Once in a divorce case, where counsel for a well-heeled couple had condescendingly tried to explain to the trial judge, Judge Pryor, about the importance of the right summer camp for the couple's children, he saw that they assumed he knew nothing of that strata. He never disclosed his own attendance at Northfield Mr. Hermon, then Dartmouth and Georgetown.
In his last years, we would meet, usually serendipitously, at the same health club. Everyone in the locker room knew and respected him; he would enjoy getting into discussions with them about almost any subject. He was also proud of his two sons, doing his best to launch them on good careers. At home, the judge conceded that his wife of many years was in charge, pointing out that she was a teacher, who to him had more natural authority than a judge.
There have been far too few jurists who brought his temperament and skills to the job. In our ideologically-divided age, he has already been and will continue to be sorely missed. He was someone for whom you wanted to give nothing less than your best.
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