OF EVER HONORED MEMORY :

If you'll pardon a brief indulgence, our grandfather, Orrin Grimmell Judd, died on July 7, 1976. It seemed in retrospect almost as if he knew it was coming, having taken me to his 50th reunion at Colgate, Stephen on Operation Sail in New York Harbor, and our sister to the ABA convention in Aspen, CO (where he was when he died, having apparently disobeyed doctor's orders to avoid high altitudes).

He graduated from Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn when he was 13, then PGed for two years at the Peddie School, where he learned Esperanto. After Colgate he went to Harvard Law School where he graduated first in his class and then clerked for the great Learned Hand. During his professional career he was Tom Dewey's Solicitor General, a partner at Goldstein, Judd and Gurfein--which was one of the first mixed religion law firms in New York City (and, according to the Web, a CIA front), and then a Federal judge for the Eastern District of New York.

To the best of my knowledge he never swore, drank or smoked in his life. He kept the Sabbath holy, though he worked like a dog the rest of the week. He was so proper that he always wore a suit and a hat and garters to hold up his socks. One night when someone tried stealing his car but only got a few blocks, the cops asked him to come put it away and he dressed right down to the cuff links in the middle of the night to do so. He was kind and generous, though distant in that WASPy way. He had a wit so dry that people often missed his comments. I remember one time we were theoretically headed to Howard Johnson's for dinner and our grandmother yelled at him :

Grandma : Orrin Judd, you're going the wrong way just as fast as you can.

Grandpa : I can go faster.

He was quite the most remarkable man I've ever known and I've missed him every day of the last 26 years.

MORE :
Here's a snippet from an article that's online which, though I'd never heard of it, sounds typical of him :
Broadcast Reform Revisited: Reverend Everett C. Parker and the "Standing" Case (Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ v. Federal Communications Commission) (Robert Horwitz, The Communication Review 1997)

With $17,000 from the Board for Homeland Ministries (and later another $10,000 from the Committee for Racial Justice Now -- both United Church of Christ organizations), Parker approached Orrin Judd, a prominent Baptist layman and an attorney who had represented one of the parties in the legal controversies at the founding of the United Church of Christ. A respected and able member of the New York bar, Judd knew nothing of communications law, but he had worked with Parker previously, and agreed to become counsel. Between Parker's knowledge of administrative law and the Communications Act, and Judd's knowledge of lawyering, the two devised a strategy to get past the huge first hurdle of the Office of Communication's lack of standing.

If a citizen had a problem with a broadcast station, the FCC's normal procedure was to have the individual file a complaint with the Commission against the station. The citizen, because s/he had no standing, technically could not argue before the Commission. The Commission in effect facilitated an interchange between the citizen and the station in question. The Commission would forward the complaint to the station. The station typically would reply that the citizen's allegations were untrue (or untrue now) and the whole thing would be buried in a file that might be examined at station renewal time. The Commission had never acted on a complaint from the public at license renewal time, so the complaint system was essentially a way of smothering problems via bureaucratic procedure. The operative presumption was that unless a station violated FCC rules in a repeated and egregious manner, its license would be renewed.

Parker and Judd's gambit was to devise a strategy to catch the station in a direct lie. WLBT was coming up for license renewal, and Lamar Life filed its application with the FCC on March 3, 1964. Parker and Judd had met with FCC Chairman E. William Henry to get his sense of things and to alert him as to what might be coming down the line. Henry encouraged them to file against the stations (Parker, interview by author, September 29, 1991). Instead of filing a complaint, Parker and Judd submitted a petition in the form of a "bill of particulars," in which they challenged the station's license renewal application on the basis of evidence the station had failed to serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity. Though it was a petition, the document was presented in the form one would present if one entered an application for a suit in a district court, asking the Commission to hold a hearing on the basis of evidence that the petitioners would present at that hearing. Parker maintained that federal regulatory agencies stood in the same legal position as did a federal district court. Judd, though a bit dubious, admitted his ignorance of regulatory law and deferred to Parker. In Parker's retelling, Judd said, "Everyone would like to make new law. Let's try it" (Parker, telephone interview by author, August 31, 1995). No one had ever filed a petition to deny a license without asking for the station. Asking for the station established a property right claim and hence gave one standing. But the petitioners did not want the station; they wanted the FCC to hold a hearing and find a new licensee.

Formally called a "Petition to Intervene and to Deny Application for Renewal," the document charged that WLBT had discriminated against Negroes in the presentation of news and announcements and the selection of program material. The station had failed to serve the interests of the substantial Negro community in its viewing area (which represented approximately 45% of the total population within the station's prime service area), and had further failed to give a fair presentation of controversial issues, especially in the field of race relations. In addition, WLBT provided a disproportionate amount of commercials and entertainment, with very little attention devoted to public affairs, education, or information. Because the station's performance violated the public interest provisions of the Communications Act, the petitioners asked that they be permitted to intervene and be heard in the license renewal proceeding and that the matter be set down for an early hearing (Petition to Intervene and to Deny Application for Renewal, April 8, 1964).

And here's another that involves him :
JUSTICE HUGHES' APPOINTMENT--THE COTTON STORY RE-EXAMINED (Frederick Bernays Wiener, Supreme Court Historical Society 1981)

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 8, 2002 7:12 PM