The Death of an Innovator

This past weekend, Yale Law's Daniel Freed died.  He was a tremendous teacher, and a remarkable innovator.  A full biography of his work is available here. 

I was one of the lucky people who took Prof. Freed's sentencing seminar.  It was a class which launched several academic careers, including mine.  For the first semester, we studied sentencing law and policy.  The second semester was completely different.  Judges from Alabama came to New Haven, and we met with them on Friday night and most of the day on Saturday, talking about their sentencing practices and learning more about how sentencing really worked at the ground level. 

Often, class met at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning.  No one was late.  Perhaps that alone says all that needs to be said about the teaching abilities of Dan Freed.

-- Mark Osler