A lifetime fighting injustice has made Hans Linde '47 one of the most important judges of our time



At the age of 75, and nearing the end of a distinguished career as a law professor and judge, retired Oregon Supreme Court Justice Hans A. Linde '47 is not yet ready to submit to what he obviously considers an attempt to write his psychobiography.

At the beginning of our second interview, at the Willamette University Law School in Salem, where he is a scholar in residence, Linde handed me a cartoon from the New Yorker he cut out especially for me. In it Chrirtopher Columbus is standing before the throne of a somewhat surly Queen Isabella. "Just tell me about the new continent," she says. "I don't give a damn about what you've discovered about yourself."

Except for the role reversal-or maybe because of it, considering Linde's merry sense of irony-it's perfect. I hold the cartoon in front of me for a moment, trying to figure out what to say next.




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