Justice White and the Virtues of Modesty
Justice Byron R. White was one of the most talented persons I have ever had the privilege to know. A brilliant thinker, writer of uncommon economy, and storied athlete, White had the innate personal skills to accomplish pretty nearly anything he set his mind to. Yet, in the year I spent as his law clerk and the years thereafter until his death, the quality that impressed me the most was his modesty. He never boasted about what he had done or could do, and he never told stories with the implicit purpose of glorifying some aspect of his past. When my co-clerks and I would ask questions of great curiosity about some of the famous people he had known over the years, his responses would be respectful and occasionally surprising. But they invariably placed the other person at the center of the story and not himself. As a role model both personally and professionally, he served as a daily reminder that hard work, conscientious attention to duty, and genuine respect for others are values that produce their own rewards distinct from the more ephemeral psychic lift of praise and recognition. I first glimpsed Justice White's distinctive modesty when we met in 1990. When he called to invite me for an interview to be his law clerk, I was clerking in San Francisco for Judge Joseph T. Sneed. The Justice invited me to travel to Washington within the next week, cautioning that it was no sure thing that I would get the job but saying he would understand if I thought the cost too great for the opportunity. Of course, any young lawyer would jump at that chance, expense be damned. After I had flown a total of 6,000 miles for an interview that lasted barely eighteen minutes, I can still remember the excitement I felt at his subsequent call a few weeks later offering me the clerkship, which he prefaced by saying, "I'm getting pretty old. You never know whether I'll make it or not, and you may want to take a job with a younger Justice." Perhaps because lightning seemed to strike with regularity in his own life, he was just unaware that I might not want to risk it striking more than once in mine. Nor after having met him would I have wanted it to.