University of Virginia Library

'Minds And Moods'

Hardy C. Dillard, now in his last year
as dean of the Law School and already
something of a legend around the University,
offers some thought-provoking comments
about the role of the humanities in
the winter issue of the Virginia Quarterly
Review. He calls his essay "Minds and
Moods," a "mile protest against certain
trends which seem to me perceptible in
governmental and academic circles." Since
so many members of the University community
are, or will be, involved in both
those "circles," his article, it seems to us,
ought to be required reading.

Dean Dillard's thesis is that the decision-making
process ought not only to be fact-oriented,
but should include "other types of
inquiry of a more speculative nature" as well.

He cites a conversation he once had as
an example of how much more aware of
this broader approach to policy-making the
British are than the Americans. The master
of an Oxford college, reflecting on the
beauties of English gardens, commented:
"I have come to believe that the most
significant single characteristic of the English
is that they have the temperament of
gardeners-of growers." Dean Dillard
asked himself what single characteristic
might be applied to Americans and arrived
at the answer of "makers"-"the characteristic
of those who care less of 'maturing'
things than 'constructing' them."

Dean Dillard feels this is not a necessarily
bad national trait-and he admits
identifying national traits is a risky business
-but he feels it has deprived us at important
times in our history of a feeling
of continuity of our institutions with those
in our past. We think of the writing of
the Constitution, for example, as a
"miracle" which expressed a new political
order, not as a process that reflected
seven hundred years of development of English
law and government.

The dean agrees with the great jurist
Learned Hand, who said that "a bowing
acquaintance with Acton and Maitland,
with Thucydides, Gibbon, and Carlyle, with
Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton,
with Machiavelli, Montaigne, and Rabelais,
with Plato, Bacon, Hume, and Kant" is
as important to a judge as are books written
upon specific legal subjects.

We agree, too, and urge you to read
the rest of Dean Dillard's observations.