The following are remarks by U.S. Surpreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito on receiving the Learned Hand Award from the Federal Bar Council at its Law Day dinner on May 4 at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. The text has been edited for publication.
It is a special honor to receive an award bearing the name of Learned Hand, surely one of the greatest judges of the 20th century. When Learned Hand died in 1961, a front page obituary in The New York Times referred to him as “the greatest jurist of his time.”1 Time magazine described him as “a legal eminence worthy of rank with John Marshall and Oliver Wendell Holmes.”2 Nearly a half century has passed since Learned Hand died, and yet his fame lives on. Indeed, I am convinced that there are many, not in this room tonight but elsewhere, who know that Hand was a great judge but know virtually nothing else about him.
