Whenever I consider the contributions of people such as the three justices
who have served on the Indiana Supreme Court for more than twenty-five years,
I am reminded of the words musician Tom Lehrer used in praising the life’s work
of one of the world’s greatest composers: “It is a sobering thought that when
Mozart was my age he had been dead for three years.”
It is not by accident that the walls of university buildings and public
courthouses frequently display the names of great lawgivers. Such people are an
inspiration to carry on.
Inevitably they give us many lessons. One is a lesson in determination and
adaptability to change. Issac Blackford became a judge during the first year of
statehood when our government fit nicely in the statehouse in Corydon, and he
departed after the new constitution was written and the nation was preparing for
a civil war. Roger O. DeBruler came to the court when Lyndon B. Johnson was
President, and I was a college senior, and he stayed long enough to become one
of the first members of the court to draft opinions using a computer. Richard M.
Givan first became part of the court’s life as a law clerk in 1951, and he stayed
until his secretary, Jackie Anders, learned to put opinions on the computer. He
once told me that he had in his lifetime known personally one-third of all the
people who served on the Indiana Supreme Court.
These justices are worth remembering because we have had the good fortune
to be their colleagues and friends. They are worth memorializing, however, for
other reasons, the reasons for which their fellow citizens will remember them.
Like so many other judges and like so many great lawyers, their fellow citizens
will remember them for what they did for our society.