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Henry Friendly was the Federal Judge.

Sloppy Thurston was the Baseball Player.

Henry Friendly

Judge Henry Jacob Friendly, who sat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1959 until 1986, wrote opinions that are still among the most cited in federal jurisprudence. He has been cited in over 125 Supreme Court opinions, and was “a giant in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, federal jurisdiction, statutory interpretation, securities law, and trademark law.” When writing a judicial opinion, Henry would be able to write his opinions in one draft — often in one sitting — citing precedent from memory. When he needed to quote from text, he would remember exactly the right volume of the Federal Reporter to pull from the shelf. His intellectual brilliance could be seen in his earlier years, as well. As a 16-year-old freshman at Harvard College, he received the second-highest grade in the history of the most advanced mathematics course available to entering undergraduates. The highest grade (by a close margin) went to future Harvard Professor of Mathematics, Marshall Stone (son of future Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone), who would discover several noted theorems. Later, Harvard Law School Professor Felix Frankfurter personally recruited Friendly to the law school. There, Friendly served as president of the Law Review and earned, arguably, the best grades in the law school’s history. Friendly went on to simultaneously be Pan Am Airways’ full-time general counsel and a founding partner of the firm Cleary Gottlieb. “As a former practicing lawyer and adviser to businessmen,” Judge Michael Boudin has written, Friendly “understood the need for predictability and for protecting reliance on settled issues.” Friendly’s intellect and approach to judging prompted Judge Richard Posner to call Friendly “the greatest federal appellate judge of his time.”

Sloppy Thurston

According to one source, Hollis John “Sloppy” Thurston inherited his name from his father, a charitable restaurant owner who gave free soup to the poor. Despite what the nickname might imply about his physical appearance, Thurston was actually a “meticulous and dandy Jazz Age dresser.” Throughout his career, he played for several teams: the St. Louis Browns (who he started the majors with), the Chicago White Sox, the Washington Senators, the Brooklyn Robins, and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Thurston, a right-handed pitcher, had a reputation for being a specialist with the “fadeaway” pitch, which he described as “a kind of fade-away that breaks away from a left-handed batter. It’s a slow ball.” The man certainly knew his own arsenal; during a 1923 game, he struck out three batters with nine pitches. Thurston was also known to be one of the best-hitting pitchers in baseball, with a .270 lifetime average and four .300 seasons. During his later job as a scout, he signed Ralph Kiner to the Pirates.

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CORRECT!

Henry Friendly

Judge Henry Jacob Friendly, who sat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1959 until 1986, wrote opinions that are still among the most cited in federal jurisprudence. He has been cited in over 125 Supreme Court opinions, and was “a giant in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, federal jurisdiction, statutory interpretation, securities law, and trademark law.” When writing a judicial opinion, Henry would be able to write his opinions in one draft — often in one sitting — citing precedent from memory. When he needed to quote from text, he would remember exactly the right volume of the Federal Reporter to pull from the shelf. His intellectual brilliance could be seen in his earlier years, as well. As a 16-year-old freshman at Harvard College, he received the second-highest grade in the history of the most advanced mathematics course available to entering undergraduates. The highest grade (by a close margin) went to future Harvard Professor of Mathematics, Marshall Stone (son of future Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone), who would discover several noted theorems. Later, Harvard Law School Professor Felix Frankfurter personally recruited Friendly to the law school. There, Friendly served as president of the Law Review and earned, arguably, the best grades in the law school’s history. Friendly went on to simultaneously be Pan Am Airways’ full-time general counsel and a founding partner of the firm Cleary Gottlieb. “As a former practicing lawyer and adviser to businessmen,” Judge Michael Boudin has written, Friendly “understood the need for predictability and for protecting reliance on settled issues.” Friendly’s intellect and approach to judging prompted Judge Richard Posner to call Friendly “the greatest federal appellate judge of his time.”

Sloppy Thurston

According to one source, Hollis John “Sloppy” Thurston inherited his name from his father, a charitable restaurant owner who gave free soup to the poor. Despite what the nickname might imply about his physical appearance, Thurston was actually a “meticulous and dandy Jazz Age dresser.” Throughout his career, he played for several teams: the St. Louis Browns (who he started the majors with), the Chicago White Sox, the Washington Senators, the Brooklyn Robins, and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Thurston, a right-handed pitcher, had a reputation for being a specialist with the “fadeaway” pitch, which he described as “a kind of fade-away that breaks away from a left-handed batter. It’s a slow ball.” The man certainly knew his own arsenal; during a 1923 game, he struck out three batters with nine pitches. Thurston was also known to be one of the best-hitting pitchers in baseball, with a .270 lifetime average and four .300 seasons. During his later job as a scout, he signed Ralph Kiner to the Pirates.

CONTINUE WITH QUIZ