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Legal Knowledge
Episode 1, Season 2 Interview

Interview published: February 4, 2026

Transcript created: February 3, 2026

Hosts: Randi Flaherty and Loren Moulds

Guests: A. E. Dick Howard and Catherine A. Ward

A. E. Dick Howard | 00:10
So, when I came back to teach in 1964, the change was under way. I had this flood of big cases, Gideon v. Wainwright [272 US 335 (1963)], Miranda [v. Arizona, 384 US 436 (1966)] incorporation of the Bill of Rights. One person, one vote. I mean, on and on. It was a time of total transformation. And that's when I began my teaching career.

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Randi Flaherty | 00:35
Hello, and welcome to season two of Legal Knowledge, a podcast about the history of American legal education, particularly as it unfolded at the University of Virginia School of Law. I am Randi Flaherty, head of special collections at the law library and UVA Law School historian, and one of the hosts of this season.

Loren Moulds | 00:53
And I'm Loren Moulds, head of digital scholarship and preservation at the law library, and I'm the other host for this season.

Randi Flaherty | 01:00
Loren and I, along with our former colleague Meggan Cashwell, coedited a book titled Legal Education at the University of Virginia: Tradition and Transformation. We're really excited that this book has just been published by UVA Press and is out now on the shelves. And that book forms the basis for this podcast.

Loren Moulds | 01:19
Meggan hosted the first season of Legal Knowledge. She's moved on from her Law School postdoc to a new position, so Randi and I will be anchoring season two, which should be a lot of fun given that we've worked together for over ten years.

Randi Flaherty | 01:32
Yes, you and I have been deep in the history of UVA Law for some time. And to all the Meggan fans out there, don't worry. She coauthored a chapter in the second half of the book, so we'll be hearing from her again before the season is through.

Loren Moulds | 01:43
So, this season, we're moving on from the nineteenth century to explore how UVA Law evolved over the twentieth century and up to the present.

Randi Flaherty | 01:51
And we'll hear from A. E. Dick Howard (1961) about the development of constitutional law. We'll hear from former Law School dean Risa Goluboff, who will help tell the story of racial integration at the Law School and at UVA more broadly. Claudrena Harold will join us from UVA's history department to discuss law student activism around curricular change. Those are just a few of the voices we'll hear.

Randi Flaherty | 02:14

I can't give it all away.

Loren Moulds | 02:16
But as you and I were discussing how best to get the season started, we both agreed that we should begin with A. E. Dick Howard, his coauthor Catherine [A.] Ward (2022), and the history of constitutional law and how it was taught at UVA. This story provides really, really important context for the stories to come, especially as we explore how the Law School developed during the civil rights movement.

Randi Flaherty | 02:38
Exactly. So, Dick Howard and Catherine Ward, to give listeners some context. Professor Dick Howard graduated from the UVA Law School in 1961, started teaching at UVA in 1964. He just retired in 2024.

Loren Moulds | 02:52
So, let's be clear. That's sixty years on the Law School faculty.

Randi Flaherty | 02:58
Yes. Longest faculty member to ever serve at UVA, in the Law School and beyond. Catherine Ward was one of Dick's former students. She graduated from the Law School in 2022 and is a practicing attorney now. Dick and Catherine's chapter explores the drafting of two Virginia state constitutions, one completed in 1902 and one in 1971. And it emphasizes the role that UVA Law alums played in drafting these constitutions using lessons from the law school classroom.

Randi Flaherty | 03:29
And Dick was personally involved. He served as executive director of Virginia's Constitutional Revision Commission in 1968. And he's got a really interesting story to tell, this behind-the- scenes story of not only drafting the constitution, but working with the legislature and then traveling around the state in a big white Cadillac to try to sell this constitution to the public.

Loren Moulds | 03:51

Before Randi interviewed Dick Howard, I sat down with Catherine to get some context on their chapter.

Randi Flaherty | 03:56
And after that, our team went to Dick Howard's house to hear more about his first-person perspective on teaching constitutional law. Here are those two conversations and we hope you enjoy them as much as we did.

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Loren Moulds | 04:22
Hello everyone! I'm here with Catherine Ward, who coauthored the chapter on UVA Law’s constitutional law curriculum. She's also a recent graduate of UVA Law. Catherine, the last time I saw you was at the collective completion of the book. What have you been up to?

Catherine A. Ward | 04:36
Thanks so much for having me. It's really great to have another chance to talk about the book chapter. It was so meaningful to work on this project with Professor Howard. That was, I guess, spring of 2023. So, at that point, I was clerking for the [US District Court for the] Western District of Virginia with Judge Norman K. Moon (1962). From there, I went to the [US Court of Appeals for the] Third Circuit.

Catherine A. Ward | 04:57
I clerked for Judge D. Brooks Smith. After I finished my clerkship with Judge Smith, I moved to Washington, DC, and began work at a law firm.

Loren Moulds | 05:07
So, this chapter serves as a key stepping stone in our broader look at UVA Law's curricular evolution. Can you give us a sense of what you and Professor Howard sought to explore?

Catherine A. Ward | 05:18
Our chapter explores the distance traveled between the racist and reactionary 1902 Virginia constitution, which sought to roll back the gains that formerly enslaved individuals in Virginia made after the Civil War, and the progressive 1971 constitution, which aimed to create a more inclusive political community in the Commonwealth. Many prominent Virginians who studied law at UVA went on to shape the Commonwealth’s

Catherine A. Ward | 05:45
1902 white supremacist constitution, as well as the state's far more inclusive 1971 constitution, which endeavored to, among other things, ensure massive resistance could never again occur in Virginia. Our chapter offers insights into how the state constitutions’ drafters influenced the Commonwealth by first being influenced in the constitutional law classroom.

Loren Moulds | 06:13

So, just listening to you talk, it reminds me of how much took place in the twentieth century, especially at UVA Law. I just wanted you to help unpack a few of the points you've uncovered. You mentioned the 1902 constitution. Can you give us a sense of the significance of the Virginia 1902 constitution?

Catherine A. Ward | 06:31
When delegates gathered in Richmond for a convention to write a new state constitution, Reconstruction had recently ended, and they had ample precedents to work towards ensuring white supremacy at the state level. As a result, those in Virginia, when putting forward their own constitution, recognized that even after the Reconstruction-era amendments, they could avoid being struck down by the United States Supreme Court, even if they took steps that essentially prevented Black individuals from receiving public education or access to the franchise.

Catherine A. Ward | 07:13
It was fascinating to recognize the ways in which men who studied at the same university that I did, decades and decades before, used their university education to put some real horrors into the state and into the world. Working on this chapter and seeing the way in which men, and then later women as well, at the University of Virginia over the decades worked to fight against those horrors and use constitutional law to change the realm of civil rights in the state and in the country was incredibly impactful. And, in all honesty, inspires me to see what future University of Virginia lawyers do in this world.

Loren Moulds | 08:01
Catherine, that is such a valuable perspective, especially in the context of this episode. What should we ask Professor Howard about his experience and his time as a student, teacher, and member of the Constitutional Commission?

Catherine A. Ward | 08:14
I suggest that as you interview Professor Howard about his illustrious teaching career, you ask him about his decades in the classroom following 1971, where our chapter ends.

Loren Moulds | 08:25
Catherine, thanks so much for talking with us today.

Catherine A. Ward | 08:28

Great. Thank you so much.

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Randi Flaherty | 08:53
Well, I'm here today with Professor A. E. Dick Howard. Dick, thank you so much for having us to your home.

A. E. Dick Howard | 08:58
Happy to do it. To go to go down memory lane will be a pleasure.

Randi Flaherty | 09:01
You've written a chapter with Catherine Ward that talks about Virginia constitution making in the twentieth century. And you end that chapter with some brief personal reflections. And I really wanted to dive into those personal reflections and experiences today. I think they're a wonderful complement to your chapter. And I wanted to start when you were a law student. When you were a law student from 1957 to 1961, you took constitutional law as a class with Dean [Frederick Goodwin Deane] Ribble (1921).

Randi Flaherty | 09:27
And I was wondering if you could describe Dean Ribble to us briefly?

A. E. Dick Howard | 09:31
Dean Ribble was both the dean of the Law School, he was a double dean in a sense, Dean Deane, and he was my constitutional law professor of long standing. He was toward the end of his teaching career at that time. But you have to remember, that was the 1950s. The Warren Court was not yet in full bloom. And the constitutional law course was, in those days, very much about the structural constitution, in particular the Commerce Clause, burdens on commerce, state taxation, that sort of thing. Ribble had written a book on the Commerce Clause, so we got a lot of that. And he was also a somewhat enigmatic teacher. He was the sort of person who would toss a lot of questions, and you'd go away sort of wondering what the answer to that question was. I think that was deliberate on his part, as part of the so-called Socratic method. But he was a warm, wonderful human being. Tidewater person with a very thick Virginia accent. He was the embodiment of what the University of Virginia was like in those days, when we were much more nearly a state law school. I mean, we were becoming national, but the feel of the place was very much Virginia.

Randi Flaherty | 10:38
And you mentioned the Warren Court, and you went to law school during a time of really volatile change around constitutional law. Can you talk a little bit about what it was like to be a law student in that moment?

A. E. Dick Howard | 10:49
Well, the real changes lay ahead, because I was here—I enrolled in the late ‘50s. I then went to Oxford for two years, came back, graduated in 1961. The big changes came in the ’60s. The premonition of change came with Brown v. Board [of Education of Topeka, 347 US 483], 1954. You could tell some important things were ahead. But it was in the early ‘60s, I was clerking for [US Supreme Court] Justice Black, Hugo [L.] Black, between 1962 and 1964. And that was precisely the moment that Felix Frankfurter had left the court. Arthur [J.] Goldberg took his place. The liberal majority on the Warren Court came into being, and I was at Black’s elbow. I mean, I was at the heart of the transformation of both the court and the [US] Constitution.

So, when I came back to teach in 1964, the change was underway. I had this flood of big cases. Gideon v. Wainwright, Miranda incorporation of the Bill of rights. One person, one vote. I mean, on and on. It was a time of total transformation. And that's when I began my teaching career. So, for me, it was a very exciting time to be in the classroom.

Randi Flaherty | 12:00
Yes. So, you started back at the Law School in 1964. You’d only recently graduated. You started back as a faculty member and then, in 1968, you were selected to serve as executive director of Virginia's Commission on Constitutional Revision. Can you tell us how you ended up getting that job?

A. E. Dick Howard | 12:18
Well, that's interesting. I frankly don't recall, when I was a law student, any of my professors talking about state constitutions. I mean, maybe maybe I was nodding or missed class or something, but I don't remember that it was important. But suddenly there I was, young, just newly minted member of the law faculty, and the commission needed an executive director. Namely, a draftsman to kind of, they would make decisions, someone had to kind of pull it together in legal language. I suspect Hardy [Cross] Dillard (1927), who was a member of the commission and the dean of the Law School at that time, I suspect Hardy had something to do with it because I had been his student. He knew my work. So, they came to me and said, would I like to take on that job? And I was typical young law professor. I said, Piece of cake. I can—you want to write a constitution? Sure, I can do that. Well, what I didn't tell them at the time was I hadn't read the old Virginia constitution [laughs]. I didn't know what was in it, and then went and read it and was appalled by what I found. I realized how badly the revision was, was needed. So, I took on the job. I sort of learned on the job as it was, but luckily I was young and vigorous and able to spend some, a lot of long nights and that kind of thing. So, that's really how it got started. It was not part of my game plan.

Randi Flaherty | 13:37
Just staying in this moment of 1968. Can you tell us why Virginia decided to to take this step, to revise its constitution at that moment?

A. E. Dick Howard | 13:47
Oh, my goodness, it was it was desperately needed, because think about the ‘60s. One of the most turbulent decades of the twentieth century, especially in American politics and in constitutional law. You had the one person, one vote decision, which redrew the map of America. You had the abolition of the poll tax. You had, the Congress had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. You had, on top of that, really dire circumstances. The assassinations, Robert [F.] Kennedy (1951), [President] John [F.] Kennedy, Martin Luther King [Jr.]. Arson and riots in the cities. It was a, in many ways, a terrible decade, but also a decade of positive change taking place in the Supreme Court. So, given all that, the old constitution had been written in 1902, a racist white supremacy document steeped in an articulated desire to get Black Virginians out of politics. And they succeeded. Black voters were only about 5 percent of the population after the 1902 constitution.

People may remember the [Harry F.] Byrd machine that was in power for Virginia for so many decades, and its pillar was the 1902 constitution. So, the change, partly forced by federal circumstances, partly driven by what was happening in Virginia, was absolutely necessary. So, Mills [E.] Godwin [Jr.] (1938), ironically enough, he had been a massive resister. As a member of the state legislature, he'd been a leader in opposing Brown v. Board of Education. But then he gravitated to a more moderate position. He appointed the commission, and he appointed some of Virginia's leading citizens. Lewis [F.] Powell [Jr.], later on the US Supreme Court. Dillard, who later sat on the World Court at The Hague. Oliver [W.] Hill, who was the leading civil rights attorney at that time. Colgate [W.] Darden, former UVA president, former governor of Virginia, and so forth. Just an amazing group of people. They were the ones that with whom I worked. It was absolutely the best minds of Virginia.

Randi Flaherty | 16:02
And so, you served as executive director. Can you tell us how you, how you organized the work of the commission?

A. E. Dick Howard | 16:09
Well, it was based on the Law School, in many ways. It was front and center in this effort. Obviously I, this is where I was physically. We had some professors who were hired to be counsel to subcommittees. We divided the commission up into five subcommittees. And two of the five counsel were Peter [W.] Low (1963) and Professor Currier, Tom [Thomas S.] Currier, were counsel. We had any number of students writing research memoranda. I mean, something like one hundred fifty memoranda, all of which are in the law library for. And people, lawyers consult them for background on the commission. So, we had—and of course, the law library, Frances Farmer and her staff were wonderful in supporting us. So, the Law School was the nerve center. It was a center of a, it was the strategy room in so, so many ways. Of course, we fanned out across the state to collect public opinion and the like, but it was probably more of a UVA operation than we care to admit in public [laughs].

Randi Flaherty | 17:09
Yes. Can you take us a little bit behind the scenes? You spent the summer and the fall of 1968 at the Law School in this, in this revision process. Can you tell us a little bit about how you worked? Were you working in Clark Hall?

A. E. Dick Howard | 17:20
I was working, we were in Clark Hall those, in those days. I did a lot of work at home because I was uninterrupted. I had my my study and my books and all that here. But we had meetings during the summer and fall of 1968. We had, these were full-time people. The members of the commission had jobs. You know, they were very busy professional people. So, we'd meet on long weekends. They would make a decision. I would pull an all nighter pulling it all together and trying to sum up what I thought they were trying to accomplish. Put something on their desk the next morning, and then we'd move on article by article of the constitution. And then, finally, in the fall of 1968, we had it ready and presented the final report, three hundred fifty- page report, to the [Virginia] General Assembly and the governor on January the first, 1969.

Randi Flaherty | 18:14
And can you tell us a little bit about where the process went after that?

A. E. Dick Howard | 18:18
Well, that was the drafting. That was the commission proposing what they thought the—we basically rewrote the old constitution and got rid of about half of it. The present Virginia constitution is about half the length of the 1902 constitution. And of course, it was progressive, brought up to date. Strong education article mandating that localities could not close their schools as Prince Edward County had done in 1950s. Important, a new conservation or environmental article. Education is now in the bill of rights as a fundamental right. A number of important things happened. Ironically, a little ERA [Equal Rights Amendment]. Virginia never ratified the big ERA, but we have one in our state constitution. So, we presented that to the governor and the legislature. The General Assembly went into special session in early 1969 and did a wonderful job. I went to Richmond as their counsel. For having been executive director, my next role, as it were, was to be counsel to the General Assembly during their work. And I was worried that a bunch of politicians would just destroy the good work we had done. But I would say, on balance, they improved it. And I think one of the secrets is that one out of every three members of the General Assembly in those days was a UVA Law graduate. And they were in the key committees and the like—Hunter [B.] Andrews (1948) and some others that were close friends.

So, the transition from what the commission had done to what the legislature had done was much more seamless than I thought it would be. Well, so the legislature basically approved the commission's work with a few changes. Then it went to referendum. [Abner] Linwood Holton [Jr.], who by that time had succeeded Mills Godwin, asked me if I would direct the referendum campaign. Well, that was another new role for me because I'd never been in politics. What did I know about campaigning? So, I took a leave of absence from the Law School and went all over the state making speeches in just about every city in the county in Virginia, there are one hudred thirty of them, from Big Stone Gap on one end of the state to Onancock on the other end. And I organized a statewide steering committee, local committees in each city and county, we had television advertising, and did all the things that a candidate for office would do. With private money. No state money was involved. We ran into conspiracy theories. People who thought this constitution could not have been written in Virginia. It must have been written in, Moscow or Beijing, or worse yet, in New York or Chicago and was a hoax on the people of Virginia. But we had the leading citizens from left to right. The whole spectrum of Virginia politics was on board. And we, in the end, we got 72 percent of the vote, which in politics is a landslide. We carried every congressional district in, solidly in place. So, I think, partly because we had done such a thorough job of education, of people understanding they would be asked to vote on the constitution and what what was in it. And we did it just in time. I would hate to try to do it in today's politics. I’m not sure we could do it at all, or that it could be done properly.

Randi Flaherty | 22:01
So, you were really driving, were you driving around the state sort of on your own going to these meetings?

A. E. Dick Howard | 22:05
I was. Well, I had a college student who was my driver. And I had a late aunt had just died and given me her big white Cadillac, one of those long-finned cars you remember from that era. And so, I was the man driving [laughs] around this state with a driver in this Cadillac. It was it was not the right symbol, but but it was pleasurable. It was hard work. I mean, I was giving sometimes two and three talks a day. And Virginia's a big state. When you're at Big Stone Gap in the southwest corner, you are west of Detroit. You're closer to seven other state capitals than you are to Richmond. And I had to go all over the state. I loved it. I mean, I wouldn't want to do it full time. I wouldn't want to be running for office. But I learned the people of Virginia and their culture and their ways in ways I had—. I was a Richmond boy. I knew Tidewater. What did I know about Southwest Virginia or Southside? And, really met all kinds of interesting people. I tried in every locality to sign up somebody who mattered, like the local sheriff or the local commissioner of revenue. So, if I was giving a talk, I'd have a local guy right there on the platform with me. And it went on for several months. I gave, you know, scores of talks all over Virginia. So, it was a, it was, for me, a wonderful teaching experience. Not something I'd like to do as a profession. And of course, having Lewis Powell and Colgate Darden and that crowd on board with the commission meant that we had a lot of heft with us. And the governor, Mills Godwin, was on board, having been the former governor. Linwood Holton, others. We had all the former governors, living former governors at that time on board. The word of mouth helped us pick people. We also tried to have in every community someone from the Democratic Party, somebody from the Republican Party, but also someone from Harry Byrd's machine. Senator Byrd that year was running for reelection, 1970, as an independent. And that stood the opportunity of just messing up everything. So, we made sure to have his people on board in all these communities.

Randi Flaherty | 24:21
And so, just looking back on the work of the commission, what do you what are you most proud of?

A. E. Dick Howard | 24:26
Well, I think, well most proud of is expunging the racist history of the 1902 constitution. That was adopted about the time all these Confederate monuments went up. And you remember the story about that. I’m proud, I think first and foremost, that we have a forward looking, inclusive constitution where the question, “Who belongs to the political community?” is answered inclusively and not racially or or any other class like that. Secondly, proud of the education article, because having been through massive resistance, closing of schools, white supremacy, and all that, we now have a really solid foundation that mandates public education for every child of school age in Virginia, puts a constitutional mandate on counties and cities to put up their share of the funding. Now, it's not foolproof. I mean, the the people and the political process has to carry it forward, but it’s on a solid constitutional base. I'm proud that we have the environment in the constitution. That was a first. That's the 1970s. That was a fairly new thing in state constitutional law. And on a more lay level, accessibility, readability, a constitution that ordinary people can pick up and understand. It's not some esoteric, distant, because it has to come alive in the hearts of people. And I believe in civic education. That people have to understand what it's all about. No constitution is proof against that. That doesn't work. So, this is not a model constitution. No, but there's some compromises in terms of things you might like to have done that maybe you knew wouldn’t fly. But it’s a good constitution and it's survived pretty well. People ask, could we rewrite it? I wouldn’t want to try to do that now [laughs], just because of the political climate we live in.

Randi Flaherty | 26:23
I want to move forward, past 1971 now, and to your your long teaching career. How has constitutional law really transformed during your your teaching career?

A. E. Dick Howard | 26:33
It's been phenomenal. I just recalled the constitutional law as I taught, took it as I studied it in Dean Ribble's classroom. I was at Hugo Black’s elbow when the Warren Court flared into being , and it did so much. In a few years in the 1960s, the Warren Court not only changed how we think about how we understand constitutional law, but obviously changed profoundly the way people teach and disseminate constitutional law in the classroom. The course I taught when I first started in 1964 embraced a number of subjects, personal rights in particular, that would now be taught as separate courses. The First Amendment, church and state, federal courts, on and on and on. They're all a cluster of courses now. So, I found over the years I was teaching less and less in subject matter, but more and more in the process itself. And, always driven by the, by the court. And things, people thought things would change when [President] Richard [M.] Nixon put four justices on the court between—right there in the early part of the ‘70s. The counter revolution never happened. The Burger Court actually built on the Warren Court, for example, Roe v. Wade [, 410 US 113] 1973, which was a Burger Court opinion. So, I can give any number of examples where the Burger Court was finding more work for judges to do and expanding the world of constitutional law. I had to try to track all that. And of course, the more I taught, I did a lot of writing, as scholars are expected to do. I enjoy, I love to write, the words come to me fairly easily. And I found the more I wrote and taught, the more I understood what it was I was trying to teach and therefore tried to do more with less, as it were. Fewer cases, fewer subjects, but more and more depth and texture to it. Because constitutional theory, for example, was not part of the Warren Court. Warren Court basically just wanted to do the right thing, whatever the result. But then along came people like Nino [US Supreme Court Justice Antonin] Scalia, who taught at UVA at one point, who gives us originalism. That was a word that the, my friends on the Warren Court never thought about. Now, it's very much one of the building blocks of constitutional law. So, with more and more theory, more professors thrusting more ideas on the court, the court becoming itself more political, embedded in what what should we be doing with the Constitution? Again, that all obviously affected how I taught constitutional law.

Randi Flaherty | 29:22
And from a practical side, as a teacher, I'm just wondering how you navigated this. In terms, are you are you changing your syllabus, are you changing your teaching style? Do you have to rewrite your lectures every year? How do you navigate that? How did you navigate that? Since you taught constitutional law for so long.

A. E. Dick Howard | 29:38
My teaching of constitutional law was, frankly, very personal. I confess, this may be a Southern habit, I love storytelling. And I found, for example, I had a seminar in the Supreme Court that I started teaching probably forty years ago. And each semester I would take my students to the court, we would hear oral arguments, and then meet a justice in in his chambers or her chambers and have a personal seance with, with the justice. And I found that if I was teaching the course and if people were beginning to nod or drift a little bit, I’d tell a story and they’d wake right up. And I was fond of that. And I would get feedback saying, yes, tell us more stories. I like to think I get the pick of the crop. You know, I mean the students, first place they sign up for my courses because they they kind of heard from their other fellow students you know, what is Professor Howard like? I advise my students, forget the syllabus. Ask your friends what they thought. Somebody who was actually in the course, and then someone signs up for a second course with me. Then I feel good because they're a recidivist. I mean, the first time you sign up, you may have blundered into the wrong course, but you don't sign up a second time around unless you [laughs] really like the like like the first one. And I have found the students, one reason I—. I mean, I was teaching for sixty years, the longest run of any professor, not only at the Law School, but the history of the University from 1819. And I wouldn't have stuck around that long if I hadn't loved it. I mean, I brief and argue cases, I work with foreign countries.

I've done a lot of things. My heart is in the classroom. I mean, I really enjoy being in the classroom with my students literally more than anything else I do. Wonderful, because they're engaged, they’re smart, they're fun, they’re civil. Just everything you want about just good people. And, I don't have to worry about not surviving, having people of my generation survive because I've got all these young friends [laughs] here. And they really are just amazing people. And collectively, of course, they also feed on each other. There, there's a kind of affection and respect that passes among students and between students and faculty at UVA that I have not seen at any other law school in the country, except maybe a couple of small ones.

Randi Flaherty | 32:00
Well, we spoke to your coauthor and your former student, Catherine Ward, last week. And and we asked her what we should ask you during this interview. And one question that she had for us kind of builds on what you've just been saying. But she was she was wondering, how did your life experiences shape your approach to teaching constitutional law?

A. E. Dick Howard | 32:21
I think that's wonderful. I think the real formative influence is having the people to whom I owe a debt of something they gave me from their life experience, and that collectively has—if I if I've done anything worth doing, I owe a lot of debt to those folks.

Randi Flaherty | 32:39
Well, that's a great place to, for my concluding question to you, which is who do you want your students to become when they leave your classroom?

A. E. Dick Howard | 32:48
Well, fundamentally, I want them to be good people, honest, decent, respectful of their fellow human being, kind and thoughtful. I think the human qualities matter so much. On top of them, I’d like obviously like them to be good lawyers, understand their craft, be able to analyze statutes, the Constitution, argue cases. I want them to be technically competent. And then finally, I really want them to make a mark on their society, on the times in which they live, as some of the judges and governors, ambassadors, former people that I have taught over a period of time. I suppose I have a professor’s selective memory. I tend to forget the ones who are ne'er do wells or dropouts and say, No, I don't remember him. He must have been in somebody else's class. But, the ones I'm the most proud of are the ones who carry it through from their personal qualities, through their professional skills. Really caring about the times and the place in which they live and trying to make a mark on it.

Randi Flaherty | 33:50
Well, that's a wonderful place to end. Dick, thank you so much for for sharing with us today.

A. E. Dick Howard | 33:54

Pleasure.

—Musical Break—

Blake Cabral | 33:57
Legal Knowledge is a product of the University of Virginia Law Library special collections team. Randi Flaherty, head of special collections and legal historian, and Loren Moulds, head of digital scholarship and preservation, served as interviewers. Music and production by me, Blake Cabral, with editorial contributions from Addie Patrick and Jane McBrian. The Legal Knowledge podcast features interviews with contributors to our book, Legal Education at the University of Virginia: Tradition and Transformation, published by University of Virginia Press.

You can listen to season one online at legalknowledgepodcast.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Join us next time as we continue to explore the history of legal education at the University of Virginia. Thank you for listening.