Posted on 12/12/2008 7:03:13 PM PST by T-Bird45
William S. Stevens, whose slyly humorous law-review note on the relationship between baseballs infield fly rule and Anglo-American common law became one of the most celebrated and imitated analyses in American legal history, died Monday in Anchorage, where he was working. He was 60 and lived in Narberth, Pa.
"The Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule," 1975 The cause was a heart attack, said T. Dennis Sullivan, his brother-in-law.
Mr. Stevens was a law student at the University of Pennsylvania in 1975 when he wrote an anonymous note for the universitys law review that drew an ingenious analogy between the infield fly rule and development of common law.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
RIP, Mr. Stevens, your humor, insight, and analytical mind will be missed.
I suppose what Stevens did for Common Law, John T. Noonan did for canon law with “Gratian slept here: the changing identity of the father of the systematic study of canon law,” Traditio 35 (1979): 145-172.
Somehow this eluded me. I’ll have to read it now. RIP. He was way too young.
RIP.
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