Tributes to Bob Scott from George Triantis and Jody Kraus

Dan Barnhizer and I reached out some of Bob Scott’s co-authors to solicit their reflections on Bob’s scholarship and the experience of co-authoring such scholarship with Bob. Dean George Triantis sent us this video.

Thanks to Dan Barnhizer for the editorial work on these recordings.

In addition, Jody Kraus shared with us these remarks, delivered on the occasion of Bob’s assumption of Emeritus status at Columbia University.

Remarks for the Celebration of Bob Scott
Jody Kraus

I first spoke with Bob when I went on the job market in the fall of 1989. Bob was chairing the appointments committee at UVA law school, called to invite me to give a job talk, and said he was looking forward to talking to me about my paper. Then he paused and said, “So why wait?” and started right in. No small talk or chit chat. Just right to the substance. As it turns out, the then-future Dean of UVA law school was also a natural at small talk, large talk, and everything in between. But left to his own devices, Bob is all about the substance. In my entire career, from graduate school through law school and more than thirty years in the academy, I have never met anyone more truly enthusiastic about discussing, developing, and deploying ideas than Bob Scott. Bob has the heart and soul of a true scholar. Which goes a long way toward explaining his staggering scholarly productivity. But while it is tempting to equate Bob’s academic legacy with this formidable body of work, Bob’s most profound and lasting legacy is his love for scholarly community.

When I first arrived at Virginia, the faculty’s widespread respect and admiration for Bob Scott was evident everywhere one turned. By that time, Bob had already made his mark not only as a scholar at the frontier of the economic analysis of contracts, but as a colleague who had energized, transformed, and unified a community of academics around a shared commitment to the free and rigorous exchange of scholarly ideas. Bob believed deeply in the workshop culture and in the institutional commitment to a purely merits-based evaluation for hiring and promotion. He had little patience for faculty gossip, but endless enthusiasm for ideas and anyone interested in pursuing them. His vision was to build a law school that married teaching, collegiality, and scholarship into mutually supportive enterprises. In Bob’s view, students and faculty together should engage the scholarly enterprise, wrestling with the same ideas in the classroom that professors wrote about in law reviews.

Bob’s vision formed the foundation of the community of scholars he inspired and built at Virginia. The law school he led with that vision proved to be richly fertile ground for legal scholarship. The politics that so often distract or derail a faculty from its focus on teaching and scholarship were of little moment during Bob’s singular and unparalleled decade of success as Dean. I think that part of Bob’s magic lay in the gardener’s wisdom for keeping weeds out of the lawn: if you plant lots of good seeds in fertile ground, and give them plenty of water and sun, they’ll grow so fast and healthy that weeds won’t have room to grow. Bob’s UVA law school was so thick with the positive energy for the world of ideas that no one had the time or inclination to focus their energies elsewhere. Wherever one turned, there was abundant support for research, institutionalized efforts to celebrate scholarship (such as the wonderful tradition of inaugural chair lectures that Bob began), and boundless energy for workshops, conferences, and the central enterprise of recruiting and retaining serious scholars. Bob’s leadership enshrined those values in the core of the law school community.

But perhaps more than anything else, it was Bob himself – the scholar, teacher, colleague, and the man – that was the real magic. Anyone who has taken his classes, read his work, received his comments on their work, or heard him ask a question at a workshop, knows that Bob is a gifted academic. But Bob’s singular magic lies in who he is and how he sees life. Bob is, more than anyone I know, a naturally positive person. He understands life’s hardships, from the quotidian to the crushing, and stands ready with compassion, understanding, advice, and assistance. Yet Bob does not let these challenges get him down. And if you’re lucky enough to be in his orbit, he won’t let them get you down either. For Bob, the world has endless possibilities for the joy and fulfillment that comes from working hard. Bob shrinks life’s hardships to their bare minimum, gives them their due, and always gets back to work. For Bob, the key to a happy life is remaining true to your own passion, remaining loyal to your own life’s project.

One small but revealing example of Bob’s positive approach to life as an academic has always stayed with me. When I got tenure, Bob took me out to lunch and said, “Well, this is the last time anyone is going to sit down, read through your publications, and pat you on the back. From now on, you’re mostly on your own. It’s now on you to keep track of your progress, keep yourself motivated, and find fulfillment in your achievements.” Then Bob told me that to keep himself motivated, he long-ago adopted the practice of celebrating the publication of a law review article by taking the arrival of the reprint as an occasion to celebrate. Bob would set aside some time to read through the piece, to remember the life of the project from start to finish—to take stock of a real accomplishment. But as I recall, on at least one occasion, he and Buffie actually took the reprint out to dinner. (I can’t say for sure, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was “Marriage as a Relational Contract,” which Bob and Buffie co-authored). The reprint took pride of place in the center of the table and they both celebrated the moment by toasting to the end of a project well done.

Tonight, Bob, we’re taking you out to dinner to celebrate that mountain of scholarly achievement that fills the pages of your CV. But we’re also celebrating so much more, which your CV cannot begin to capture. We are celebrating the countless ways in which you and your scholarship have changed the legal academic landscape immeasurably for the better. We are celebrating the difference you have made in our lives as legal academics, and the lives of generations of legal academics to come.

Bob, you have been my mentor, colleague, dean, co-teacher, and co- author. But I raise my glass – as does everyone here tonight – to toast not just Bob Scott—the teacher, scholar, and colleague. But to toast you, Bob Scott, the man. Like me, everyone here counts you among their dearest friends. We could not be more appreciative of the transformative role you’ve played in our professional lives, nor more grateful for your friendship. So here’s to you, Bob: teacher, scholar, colleague, and the very best of friends.