Notable cases and judicial anecdotes

In 1967, Lord agreed with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and invalidated a clause in the 1831 will of philanthropist Stephen Girard, which had restricted scholarships at Girard College to "poor, white, fatherless boys". Lord also infuriated Philadelphia mayor James Tate by interpreting the First Amendment to invalidate the city's refusal to allow anti-Vietnam War groups to use John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia for a rock concert. In 1971 Lord overturned a recently passed state law that cut off loans or scholarships to students for "moral turpitude", viewing that legislative response to student protests illegal. The following year, Lord struck down a national wiretap law as illegal.^[3]

One of his favorite stories involved a golf game after the judge (a prominent liberal) issued a decision invalidating parochial school vouchers. When Lord asked Cardinal John Krol (well known for his conservative views) what his handicap was, Krol quipped back, "you are." In Randazzo v. Eagle-Picher Industries, Inc., 117 F.R.D. 557 (ED Pa 1987), Lord famously wrote, "Counsel brazenly, discourteously, defiantly, arrogantly, insultingly and under the circumstances rather obtusely threw back into my face the very allegations I had held insufficient by reiterating and incorporating those same crippled paragraphs.^[4] The so-called 'amended complaint' itself cheekily informs me that these paragraphs allege the states of incorporation or principal places of business of the defendant corporations.^[4] Of course, any law school student knows that both the state of incorporation and principal place of business must be diverse, but I suppose I can hardly expect any more from counsel whose familiarity with Title 28 U.S.C. § 1332 could be no more than a friendly wave from a distance visible only through a powerful telescope".^[5]