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I only recently heard of David’s sad and untimely death and cannot add much to these informed and thoughtful contributions remembering his life. I can only offer a photo and two anecdotes, which will hopefully make viewers smile.

I was one of the nine historians who started at St. Catharine’s in 1971, as referred to by John Thompson our Director of Studies. Here is David in the Matriculation portrait. Though I was not a close friend of David’s I’m standing to his left. To his right is Richard Maltby, a much better Cambridge friend who now lives in Adelaide and is Distinguished Professor of Screen Studies at Flinders University. Despite being such a small group we did not meet that often, only at organisational/social gatherings organised by John Thompson. As he noted, teaching was largely an individual affair. At one of these supervisions in medieval history, David was reading out his essay on the Ottonians or Capetians or similar when his supervisor started tinkling away on his piano. David walked out in disgust. By way of an apology (I thought at the time it was a strange way to apologise) David was invited to dine with the said supervisor and Sir Geoffrey Elton (the distinguished Tudor historian, staunch Conservative and uncle of comedian, Ben Elton). One wonders what they talked about.

As mentioned in another post, David and Mike Wintle were nearly inseparable. One of their less successful collaborations was cooking up some form of crab apple concoction, presumably to discover whether it provided some kind of a buzz. This landed them in hospital and having to face an interview with their tutor who no doubt asked them to restrain their botanical experimentation. Mike became Emeritus Chair of Modern European History at the University of Amsterdam. It seems David similarly went on to have a distinguished academic career and a fulfilling personal and family life. We will remember him at our college reunion in March when we toast absent friends.
Peter Reilly

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When I was admitted as a graduate student to Berkeley in the History Department, I wrote to Nasser Hussain, to ask his advice on how to navigate a new department. Hussain, who had written a very influential work on colonial Indian law, was kind enough to agree to speak with me by phone. After discussing some of his experiences at Berkeley, he offered me a key piece of advice. He insisted that I ought to work with David Lieberman.

I am eternally grateful that David agreed to advise me. In reviewing our correspondence and readings, I am astounded at his generosity towards me in the time that we worked together. We spent a semester preparing for my prelims, studying legal and political theory from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. To read with David was to be confronted with staggering erudition. As an inexperienced graduate student, it was difficult to comprehend how all of this knowledge had accumulated in a single person. I inquired into David’s intellectual lineage - what in the Islamicate tradition might be called an isnad, or chain of authority. Many of the distinguished authors we read were his teachers, mentors, friends - Quentin Skinner, Peter Stein, J.R. Burrow, J.G.A. Pocock, Knud Haakonsen, Michael Lobban, William Twining. To be introduced to these intellectual worlds through David was an enormous gift.

As I moved to the dissertation stage, David continued to guide me with patience, kindness, and warmth. In retrospect, he fielded an absurd number of questions from me. I brought everything to David - questions about common law and statute, rights and liberties, legislative codification, comparative law, private international law, imperial citizenship. I enjoyed sharing with him special finds from my archival research in India, detailing the Indian/imperial careers of figures such Henry Sumner Maine, James Fitzjames Stephen, Whitley Stokes, and C.P. Ilbert. I habitually find myself reflecting on our conversations, which continue to impact my writing. I still have so many more questions for David. I am saddened that I will not have the opportunity to ask them.

Despite his learnedness, David never postured. Rather, there was gentleness, humility, and, of course, humor. I confess that as I began to read the many wonderful remembrances of David, I felt anxious that there would not be sufficient attention to his remarkable wit. His humor, of course, served to put us all at ease; it also made being with David incredibly enjoyable. I think the apotheosis of our meetings was the day I called myself, in David’s own spirit of self-deprecation, a “schmuck.”  A very special sparkle came into his eyes as he commented with delight on my unexpected Yiddish. So it became a habit for us - I might preface a question or remark with the aside “as you well know, David, I am but a schmuck.” Thanks to David, perhaps a reasonably educated one.

Riyad Sadiq Koya

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I first met David in London in 1981 when we celebrated Thanksgiving with some mutual friends. I was struck at once by his intelligence, wit, and humanity. He had the gift of natural charm whose source was a strong sense of who he was and a genuine concern for others. Alas, we did not see David as much as we would have liked, but each meeting renewed the pleasure of his company and deepened my impression of his wonderful qualities  . Reading the many entries on his site, I am reminded of how being with good people makes us better. This was surely true of David. Let us hope that this will endure as one of the many blessings of his memory.
Jim Sheehan and Peggy Anderson

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I really didn’t know David, even though I met him at Cambridge in 1972, and we lived within a few miles of each other for the past 35 years.

I came upon a high school friend of his in a staircase in Herat, which is how, back at college after the summer vac in Afghanistan, I met the three cool Americans at St. Cat’s, David, Mike Wintle and Andy Finkel (even though Mike is probably Canadian). Apparently, they considered themselves the Three Musketeers. I would see David in the Seeley History Library because we both read history, and that was the term when I went over to St. Cat’s from Newnham for supervisions on the Civil War and Reconstruction with John Thompson, whom I was delighted to discover again here.

All I know is that I have this photo of David and his curls under the spires of King’s, when everyone was lounging around the grass on the Backs and somewhat listening to a concert of 300 Flutes (no joke, there really were 300).

It is a heroic picture of David at 19, and when they see it, most people who really knew him a) don’t recognize him under the hat, or b) deny that his hair could ever have been that long (this includes his sisters and his children).

Still, it is an authentic image, from a time, difficult to imagine now, when virtually nobody took any photos of each other at all.

Soon after I arrived in Berkeley with my husband in 1988, I was on Shattuck and saw a bicycle streak by. It was David, my only connection to a lost life in England. It felt like kind of a lifeline.

It turned out that my husband’s colleague Marianne Constable had been at JSP with Carol, and we would have dinner together whenever Andy visited the Bay Area. I remember Hannah in her car seat and George, at the age of 3, doing “gymnastics” at University Village with one of our daughters, which, as he remembered at the memorial service, mostly consisted of charging around in circles. They were in the same graduating class at Berkeley High.

So really, that’s all I’ve got, except to celebrate that streak of a person so singular in every respect, so accomplished on every front, so fully realized, that like Halley’s Comet, you only encounter one once in a lifetime. Last week, I asked my boss in New York if I could take time off work early to come to the service, to remember quite possibly the funniest man in the universe.

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David Lieberman arrived at JSP when I was entering my 3rd year as a graduate student.  He was a breath of fresh air, only a few years older than the students – but light years ahead in his intellect,  worldliness, and wisdom.  He taught me so much – not only about Bentham, Adam Smith and Blackstone, but also about how to be in the world.  When I moved clear across the country to take a job at the University of New Hampshire, David was one of our first visitors – such a balm for our homesick hearts!  He visited more often in the early years than my family did.  My kids always called him “that funny one.”  We treasure memories of visits with David, Carol and the kids.  And I find myself still remembering what David taught, turning in my last project to the books on Blackstone that I had read in David’s seminar at JSP.  He has enriched all of our worlds and we will miss him deeply.
-Lucy Salyer, University of New Hampshire and JSP alum

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From John Thompson

I think I can claim to have got to know David earlier than any other contributor to this padlet – even than Claire Gobbi Daunton, though she comes close.  In my case, the date was October 1971.  I had just been elected into a Fellowship at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, where I had been appointed Director of Studies in History.  David was one of the nine eighteen-year old men (all men in those days) who had been admitted to read History in the College that year.  In Cambridge then (as indeed now), the intensive teaching was in the form of weekly supervisions (or tutorials) for which the students wrote essays, and it was the supervisor of David’s work in the first term, John Brewer (later a major historian of eighteenth-century Britain) who first alerted me to David’s exceptional ability.  I am glad to see from the record that when later I supervised David’s work myself (on U.S. history), I too reported on his “genuinely original mind.”  When his motivation for studying further chunks of political history flagged, I persuaded Quentin Skinner to supervise him for the history of political thought; this solved the problem – and also determined the focus of David’s subsequent academic work.  David duly graduated in 1974 with first-class honours, which opened the way to post-graduate work in the UK but at that time he was reluctant to pursue academic study further.  I suspected that the fact that his father, George, a rabbi, was himself a distinguished scholar may have had something to do with this.

So he returned to New York City and looked for work, mainly in publishing and journalism.  But in November, he reported that “this has been a complete fiasco” and that he was becoming hostile to the aggressive atmosphere of the city and how “you are supposed to ‘sell yourself’ at all these interviews.”  He was coming “to miss Cambridge and the tranquility of academics”, and thinking of pursuing another option of which we had spoken earlier – of writing to Professor J.H. (Jimmy) Burns, who had recently been appointed editor of the Jeremy Bentham papers, about the possibility of doing research under him at University College, London.  After a period working for a New York City councilman and further hesitation, he accepted the place he was awarded to do this.  When I encountered him a year later in the British Museum, he described what he was doing as “reading for the bar in 18th-century England.”  By November 1977, he was already writing an assured and authoritative review for the TLS of a book on Bentham.  By the following year, the quality of his research led to his being elected into a Research Fellowship at St Catharine’s.

It was after David’s return to Cambridge in 1978 that my own relationship with him evolved from that of teacher or patron to one of straightforward and close friendship.  In fact, while David retained the humorous self-deprecating manner on which so many others have commented, he became in some ways a guide or mentor to me.  Thus, when I needed to decorate a newly-bought house, he was the one who showed me how to do this (and did most of the work himself).  And I soon came to realize that he was not only a true friend but a wise one.  His urging me to propose to Dorothy, now my wife of more than forty years, is not the least of my debts to him.  The three of us had a hugely enjoyable walking holiday in the Lake District in 1981.  And when Dorothy and I were in the ‘States the following summer, we had the enormous pleasure of visiting David in his parents’ house at Southampton on Long Island and luxuriating in the warmth of George and Sylvia’s hospitality.

After David secured his post in the JSP program and moved to Berkeley, our relationship took the form of phone calls, letters and the occasional visit.  All David’s letters began with self-castigation for not having written earlier, followed by the usual self-mocking account of his other activities.  The following passage from a letter of January 1985 gives the flavor: “I want to share with you a new method of work avoidance and general stress I have recently discovered.  It’s called Gardening, and it is really wonderful at the perpetual motion level.  Having waited patiently for autumn since last July, I discovered in December that there is no authentic autumn here in the first place, as things keep growing the whole time.  So I began a major attack, only to discover that I am less adept at distinguishing weeds from other things than I had thought (some of those non-weeds are pretty sly about looking like weeds) and some plants when you “trim ‘em back a bit” go about thanking you by keeling over and dying!  The whole business really crushes one’s faith in nature.  In fact, most of nature seems really nasty when you get right down to it with a good pair of clippers.  Evergreens, for example, are particularly treacherous: it turns out that evergreens shed a lot of leaves, so that they might as well not be evergreens to begin with.  Nature just lets you down at every opportunity, and if it wasn’t for people having to write books I doubt if you’d ever get a lawn mowed, let alone a bush pruned.”

When we visited David in 1986, he asked Dorothy’s advice as to when it would be proper to invite one of the students in his class out for a date, but I think it was when they visited the UK the following year that we first met Carol, and could see for ourselves how happy she made David.  In the following years, we kept in touch mostly with phone calls, though we have also been able to meet fairly often in person either in the UK or on our own trips to Berkeley to see David and Carol and their growing family.  On these visits, David invariably took us walking to Point Reyes or other favorite places.  We have a treasured photograph of David and me on Mount Tamalpais in April 2016, which turned out to be shortly before David’s horrendous bicycle accident.  Initially, Carol kept us in the picture on this and how David was doing, but before long he was back in touch himself, displaying the marvelous courage, resilience and determination with which he astonished his doctors and won the enormous admiration of all his many friends.  Twice since then, he has come to the UK to see his close friends here.  In these years, our phone conversations have given way to zoom sessions; the last of these was on August 31st, when David reported on how things were with all the members of the family spoke of what he was planning to do in his retirement, and told us about the camping trip he and Carol were about to make to Lassen National Park.

We have still not come to terms with the terrible news Carol told us in a telephone call ten days later.  But “attending” the funeral by Zoom and reading the truly amazing array of tributes and memories on the padlet have deepened our realization of how fortunate and privileged we have been to have had as a close and loving friend such a truly exceptional, gifted and simply good person.  Memories of David will enrich the remainder of our lives.

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I first met David one lunchtime in December 1975. Almost 50 years ago. He was a postgraduate student in History at UCL, London, and I was a research associate on the Bentham Project. We shared Pro JH (Jimmy) BURNS as mentor/supervisor. We both loved Jimmy and David remained devoted to Jimmy through Jimmy’s life. David was always Jimmy’s star student. On that December day David offered me a peanut butter sandwich. I declined! But we did go on to share the  English  student vice  of eating digestive biscuits when working, as well of course some interest in Bentham.

David lit up a room with his intelligence, wit, kindness, empathy, good humour. We never lost touch during all those years and I always knew he would be the same truly good person.  I saw him when he was last in Cambridge: he was tired. The accident had left its mark on him. But we talked and laughed.   I won’t see him again and I can only begin to even think of the loss to close family and Berkeley friends and colleagues. I am sad beyond words but so very glad to have known David Lieberman.

Claire Gobbi Daunton
Cambridge and London.

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David and I joined the JSP program in 1984; he was hired onto the faculty and I was a lowly first year graduate student. My classmates and I—all 6 of us—weren’t quite sure what to make of him. Our first year required seminar was staffed by luminaries in their fields—Malcolm Feeley, Bob Cooter, and more—so we were a bit worried about being stuck with a rookie member of the faculty with a title, ‘Acting Professor,’ that made his stay at Berkeley seem awfully tenuous. He had been assigned to teach us legal history in 6 weeks, and we were worried that it would be a disaster. It took David all of 5 minutes to completely turn the tide. He walked into class with a mixture of confidence and humility that is difficult to describe and impossible to replicate. He made a few comments that were both uplifting and self-deprecating. He put everyone at ease by making us feel like we had known each other for years. And without any obvious transition or change in mood he invited us into his scholarly universe through a series of class presentations and discussions that were, in every sense of the word, brilliant. My best friend in the graduate student group sat next to me, and as David led us through a discussion of Bentham (or was it Blackstone?) she leaned over to me and whispered “he’s an amazing teacher,” and I agreed. The next class she nudged me and said “he’s really cute,” and I agreed to that as well. Soon after she remarked on his delightful accent, his infectious laugh, his delicious sense of humor, and his extraordinary decency. All of us in that entering JSP class found much to love in David (has anyone ever been as successful as David in their first year of teaching?), especially my classmate Carol, who quickly understood that she had met the love of her life. Now David is gone, and the thought is devastating. With David the world was a better place, and he helped all of us be our better selves. David’s charm and grace and kindness and wisdom are irreplaceable. For all who new him, but especially for Carol, David’s loss leaves us bereft and heartbroken. He was the best, in so many ways. May he rest in peace.

Eric Feldman

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On behalf of my family, I offer my deepest condolences to Professor Lieberman’s loved ones, and I am so very sorry for your loss.  I felt so bereft when I’d heard of his passing, even as I am so grateful and blessed to have been his student.

When my daughter was starting her BA in Legal Studies at Cal, when she asked me whom I’d recommend there, I said that Professor Lieberman was just the best.  Take all of his classes: “He is one of those rare scholars who’s combined great learning with humor, grace, and wit, and he’s just a loving, kind person.  I learned so much in his classes in college, and then he helped me get through my Ph.D., during a moment when I thought that I wouldn’t make it.  Professor Lieberman is like the sweet, compassionate Dad there, and you will like him.  He has always professored in the ways that I would like to professor.”

Zoe did not tell him that she was my daughter during her first class with him, but by the second class, she let him know.  He was delighted.  She said that Professor Lieberman joked that he was now old enough to be like a grandfather in our family.  “He’s a gem,” she said, “He’s a sweet, sweet man.”  He wrote nice letters for her, and so that’s how he helped her get into excellent graduate programs during her last year of college.  It’s one thing when a great scholar has helped you, but it’s quite something else when that same great scholar does the same for your child.  How does one even measure that sense of gratitude?

Zoe insisted that we invite Professor Lieberman to her graduation party, and she was so excited when he accepted the invitation.  Seeing him there with our entire family—in his stylish hat, cracking jokes, and having a good time—I asked him to come back to our home, to bring his family along, too, and to let me make something delicious for everyone.  “Of course,” he said, “of course.”  He gave me a loving embrace, a warm congratulatory shake, and he did the same for Zoe.  We were so pleased that we would see him again soon.

As much as we are now heartbroken that we won’t be able to see him again soon, I hope that his loved ones can find some comfort in knowing that he truly was a gem for so many of us, that his kindness and compassion had crossed generations, my family being just one of many who loved and appreciated Professor Lieberman.

John S.W. Park

UC Santa Barbara

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Professor Lieberman was, and will always be, one of my favorite professors ever. He had provided me so much support and care. He had also been a wonderful advisor to my father when he was a PhD student. Professor Lieberman was a big light and love in many of our lives, including and especially mine. He was like a grandfather to me. I am forever grateful to have been his student. We will miss him so very much.

-- Zoe Lee-Park

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Like all who met Professor Lieberman, I am heartbroken after knowing about his passing. I had the opportunity to take several of his classes and worked directly with David as part of my dissertation committee at the JSP. He used to give a terrific seminar on legal history, and his course on law and social thought was a kind of intellectual experience for everyone in the classroom. And for the dissertation, I remember him as a wise professor who was always available to provide insightful advice.

But above all, my memories of David are of a warm and welcoming person. As an international student, I remember when he usually began our meetings by asking how life was going or if my family or I needed something. I also have wonderful remembrances when he took the floor telling jokes during the dinner of Malcolm Feeley´s Festschrift, or his stories about Bentham´s body at UCL. David held an exceptional balance between erudition, a sense of humor, kindness, and generosity.

After graduation, I had the opportunity to meet with him at Berkeley, and I could see his resilience after recovering from the 2016 accident. He was one of the most extraordinary people I met at JSP and a model of a scholar and human being.

He will always be in my good memories and prayers. Rest in Peace, dear David.

Cristián Villalonga

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So sad to learn of David's passing.  My sincere condolences to Carol and the family.  His first year at JSP coincided with mine as a student.  Great teacher, charming, funny guy, excellent mentor--even to someone who was not his student.  Very gracious in insisting to have lunch and hear all about my work when I was a visiting fellow.  Had great ideas for helping develop my ideas.  A great loss in many ways.  Very nice to see/read all of the ways he touched a broad swathe of people.

Bill Gallagher

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When I recall David from my time in JSP, I think of his good humor.  He was a delight to be around.  With all of the competing demands on his time, the student felt privileged to be in his company, even for brief periods.  His conversation was learned, yet leavened with irony.

So, of course, were his lectures.  He prepared hard for these.  Given his great gifts as a lecturer, it was always a bit odd to his TAs that he had a concern about being stumped by unanticipated student questions.  Asked what to do in that situation, he would sometimes respond in metaphor, invoking the Battle of Britain and the early efforts to defeat the new technology of Radar: The lecturer had to divert these students with the equivalent of tossing steel garbage cans out of a plane, in an effort to cloud the screen a little until the right answer could be discerned.  We learn better through parables - even mischievous ones - and evidently this one I have not forgotten.

But what I will most remember about David is his kindness.  He imparted it to everyone; yet it likely was received most eagerly by rank-and-file students not destined for high academic distinction.  He patiently guided such undergraduates at his office hours.  He went out of his way to make such graduate students comfortable with their scholarship and their place in the JSP program, for however long they remained.  This quality, along with his fine editing skills, made him a sought-after member of doctoral committees even when the subjects veered far from his areas of expertise.  Although such duties diverted him from his own work, he cheerfully took them on.  Some of us would never have made it through the JSP program but for David’s careful guidance and attention.  Whether it was taking the time for serious editing to make a dissertation better, or finding funding at a key moment to enable a student to continue in school, he would help.  And he would mentor.  The JSP community has been enriched by the warmth and humanity of this wonderful teacher.

John Sither

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When David was chair of JSP so much improved for us graduate students. He took the time and the care to make our lives and that of the institution better. I remember him gently steering me away from disaster my second semester of graduate school. I should not approach my coursework as a “smorgasbord“ (choose courses carefully, don’t try everything). I also remember—will always remember—his seminar on law and modern social thought. The way one of his jokes would take on a life of its own and leave us all in tears. David could not help himself. He would just keep running with the joke until we would have to break, exhausted by our laughter. And I learned so much. He was a model of clarity and precision. He presented every thinker meticulously (with extra background notes). I remember his type-written comments affixed to papers and my wonder that he had the time to take us all so seriously. I remember struggling with my health and David getting me all the practical and financial support I needed while also pushing me to push myself intellectually and get through the program (he somehow did this all without making me feel bad). David was a brilliant scholar and thinker. But what was astonishing was that he was, at the same time, so wonderfully warm and humble and self-deprecating. Last March he spoke to my graduate students via Zoom. He was, as always, frighteningly erudite and insanely funny. He spoke about Bentham and his work on Bentham and why he chose Bentham. I never liked Bentham. But suddenly I found myself questioning my long-held aversion. I loved everything that David was exemplifying for us that day: curiosity, passion, generosity, and sheer pleasure in the life of the mind. My thoughts are with his family, whom he always talked about with such love and joy.

Shalini Satkunanandan

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I was never lucky enough to be David’s colleague at JSP- a fact I’ve often regretted over the years. But I visited in 1985 and again in 1988 and David and I quickly became fast friends. In the decades since there were frequent reunions - at Berkeley, in New York, and latterly at Princeton (where David was a LAPA fellow and whence he would commute to NYC to attend his beloved opera and stay over with us.) There were also frequent family get-togethers in the summers at David’s mother’s home in Southampton. (Like her son, of whom she was immensely proud, David’s mother was just lovely…..elegant, cultured, genteel.)

My recollections echo the remarks of others on this page: David was always, and reliably, himself: everyone – students, colleagues, friends – experienced him in the same way.

He was upbeat and positive, even in times of adversity that would have soured a person with less courage and inner strength.

He was funny. He had an impish sense of humor; a droll, self-effacing way of telling stories; and a wonderful feel for human foibles and failings – his own most of all. All of this delivered with a sublime use of language and an irreverent giggle. It was such a pleasure to be in his company.

I think of his evident intelligence – he was one of these people whose every sentence was perfectly formed – his wide learning, and the relaxed, unpretentious way he set out his ideas. I remember how David introduced J G A Pocock when the great historian of political thought was giving a lecture at Boalt Hall - a bravura performance that set Pocock’s research in its historiographical context, explained its significance, and gently pointed up the critical questions that it raised - all with an elegance and clarity that had the packed auditorium hanging on his every word.

I think of his wisdom and good judgement. His finely-balanced summing up of a situation. His long, beautifully written emails, full of family news and updates about his beloved family, always rich in insight and observation and a sense of a life well lived.

I think of his unpretentious goodness.

Over the years, I’ve often asked after David to friends and colleagues who had been to Berkeley or encountered him on their travels. And I have always been struck by the warmth and affection of their replies.

Everyone loved David. We are all so much richer for having had him in our lives. In years to come the memory of him will bring a smile and the afterglow of that love. But for now, his loss is simply devastating.

David Garland, NYU School of Law

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David Lieberman and I are of an age, but he was at Berkeley and  JSP a few years before I arrived.  Along with Sandy Kadish and Shelly Messinger, David was a welcoming mentor to me, a wise guide to much that I needed to know in navigating the differences between British academic life and the life of Boalt Hall and JSP. He quickly became a friend, with the good humor and gentle irony that others have attested to. It helped that he was also an Oxbridge transplant. In certain ways, we understood each other, and when we taught the JSP Seminar together, it worked because of the richness of his scholarship, the example he set for the graduate students, and his open-ness to engagement with adjacent traditions.  David was funny, learned, and a wonderful teacher.  Always, though, I am brought back in these reflections to the theme of his wisdom, and how much I was humbled by the respect he commanded. Rest in peace, David.

Jeremy Waldron
New York University Law School

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David joined the faculty the year after I did, and he was a dear friend and valued colleague over all those years.  When I think of David, I think of the twinkle in his eye and his lovely sense of humor.  He was full of warmth and vitality and had tremendous resilience.  David was treasured by all of us and was an important part of the glue that held the law school community together.

With love,

Andrea Peterson

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Having known David for thirty years first as teacher, then mentor, friend, and eventually colleague, I struggle to find words to capture my appreciation and affection for him. David had an unerring ethical and moral compass, as well as the diplomacy to persuade others to do the right thing. The JSP program, the law school, and the university turned to him repeatedly with the most difficult problems to solve, all of which he accomplished with dedication and grace. He was also generous, compassionate, good humored and incredibly wise as a mentor and a colleague. He knew just what to say to respond to a grumpy peer review, to navigate a tricky teaching situation, or to help a struggling graduate student. No one worked harder than David, but he also showed a humility, and occasional irreverence, toward academic life that was refreshing. What I remember most fondly, however, is David’s witty yet subtle sense of humor. I still remember one particularly hilarious story about moving Jeremy Bentham’s mummified body at University College London. As others have said, David was a brilliant scholar, and his generosity and warmth toward his students and colleagues made us all better scholars, teachers, and colleagues in turn. We will miss him deeply.
-KT Albiston

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My first interaction with David was when he, as JSP chair, called to tell me I had been accepted to the Ph.D. program. I thanked him and he said telling people that they had been accepted to the program was one of the parts of his job that he enjoyed the most. He was always generous and enjoyed making people happy. But he fostered more than just happiness.

He had the ability that great teachers possess of engaging others with ideas, books, and research. In my first semester he taught the JSP introductory seminar and a couple semesters after that, I took his class on law and modern social thought. This was one of the most intellectually exciting classes I ever took in school. From Marx to Weber, Foucault, then to Maine, drawing connections to Darwin, the conversations in the seminar were simply a joy. But he also pressed his students to think about what all these ideas meant today for us in our context.

After taking his seminar I worked as his research assistant for his edition of De Lolme’s The Constitution of England. Here too, I enjoyed the research as never before. Reviewing Rousseau, or Pliny, early Roman Law, or the Twelve Tables became fascinating even if it had very little bearing on my own research. Moreover, discussing my research reports allowed me to have long, fascinating conversations in his office about so many things. I am very thankful I had him as a teacher, and I will miss him very much. My heart is with his family.

-- Pablo Rueda-Saiz

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So many have shared their sense of personal loss, while remembering the humane, supportive friend, teacher and colleague that David was. I also feel a sense of institutional loss. David was among the first faculty hired to teach in the newly established, revolutionary JSP program founded by Sandy Kadish and my husband Philip Selznick. He shared their vision for the program, setting a new direction and a humanistic slant to the traditional law school. Maintaining that character will be more difficult without David, and the loss will not be insignificant. So not only a personal loss to many of us, David's death points to the institutional loss of vision and purpose that was at the core of JSP.

I remember meeting David when he first arrived, along with Jeremy Waldron, the youngest members, of the new faculty, fresh from Cambridge, both with style and wit that added a sense of sophistication to the new  program. David charmed everyone, and throughout his years of teaching and service remained steadfast in his loyalty both to the program and its founders. He prepared the official obituary for Philip and spoke at his several memorial events, including the Centennial symposium of the CSLS, held in April, 2019 where his subject as Selznick's concept of the Rule of Law.
David, may he rest in peace, was best of the best.

My condolences to his wife, Carol and to George, Hannah and Aaron. May his memory be a blessing to you.
Doris Fine

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I did not know David for very long, since I only met him once I returned to Berkeley to direct the Legal Studies Program in 2015. But I have two memories that show what a genuinely nice person David was and how much he cared for our students.

The first memory is of David taking me out for a coffee at International House not long after I started my job. He wanted to find out how things were going and to give me some of his impressions of Legal Studies after having taught in the program and serving as Chair. He gave me an hour of his time, which I appreciate to this day, since it really helped orient me to the place of Legal Studies in the world of sociolegal studies and the world of UC Berkeley.

The second memory is much more recent, from 2019 and 2021, when I invited David to give a guest lecture to my students, who were seeing if machine learning techniques could help them understand English legal history through data in the Old Bailey Online text corpus. David gave a wonderful talk on how to use primary sources and get into the heads of the people who compiled the Old Bailey Proceedings. We all read, and “processed,” the text in the Old Bailey Online in a new light after hearing David’s talk. And the students loved it.

Students, staff, and faculty in the Legal Studies Program will all miss David. His memory is a blessing to all of us.

--Jon Marshall

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It is with great sadness that I heard that David had passed away. I had read The Province of Legislation Determined as a graduate researcher, years before I met him. I was immediately taken by the breadth of his knowledge and the lack of affectation of his style. These qualities struck me again when I met him in person at several ISUS conferences, including the one he hosted so wonderfully in UC Berkeley in 2008. Generosity is a rare quality in academia. David’s friendship and the interest he displayed in the work of others gave me confidence, as I know it did for many younger scholars. His articles on Bentham stimulated my own research and helped me to take it further. It was again at an ISUS conference in Karlsruhe in 2018 that we last shared a session and a dinner - we were all so glad to have him back! I send Carol and her family all my thoughts and friendship in these difficult times.
Emmanuelle de Champs, Paris.

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Memorial service for David, Oct. 10th at 4pm

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Memorial service for David, Oct. 10th at 4pm

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The Law School will hold a memorial service for David Lieberman, celebrating his life,  on Monday, October 10th, at 4pm, in the Warren Room (in the main Law Building, entering the Bancroft door below Piedmont Ave).  All are warmly welcome.  The service may be viewed live on the Berkeley Law Youtube channel, here.

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I took David's seminar as an LLM in 2003. That course changed my life. I'll be forever thankful to him. May his memory be a blessing.
Bruno Meyerhof Salama

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We are shocked to learn of David’s sudden death. David meant so much to us, as to so many other people, and he played an especially important role in our lives. This was bringing us together, in 1998, in his wonderful course on histories of crime and punishment. Sarah was a PhD student in JSP, and Lindsay was on sabbatical in Berkeley from London – a visit facilitated by David. It was in the two of us meeting for coffee after his class, nominally to discuss readings by Colquhoun, de Tocqueville, Dickens, Carpenter, Howard et al., that our shared professional interest became a personal partnership of nearly 25 years and counting. Even after we settled in Scotland, he warmly and enthusiastically made time to see us whenever we came to town. So many of the remembrances on this page note his warmth, humaneness, kindness and genuine interest in others and their research. We can only echo this as reflective of our own experiences. And also like others, we have tried to model our own lives as academics on his example.
-- Sarah Armstrong & Lyndsay Farmer

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David in Bucketty, NSW, OZ . Dec. 19, 2015.

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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I am devastated by the news of David’s death.  My heart goes out to Carol and to George, Hannah, and Aaron.  For me, as for so many others, David represented the best of Berkeley Law.  In countless ways, he was and remains the model of the kind of scholar, teacher, and colleague that we aspire to resemble.  I will miss David’s erudition and sharp intellect, his gentle wisdom, his generous friendship and collegiality, his selfless dedication to the community, and—certainly not least—his joyful and disarming wit.  I will never forget the courage, grace, and determination with which he confronted injuries several years ago that could easily have been spirit-crushing.  I feel extraordinarily fortunate to have known David.  May his memory be a blessing.

David Sklansky

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I will miss David dearly. The world is poorer without his incredible wit, generosity, brilliance, and humility. He, for me, is the standard of excellent mentorship.

As a fresh JSP student sitting in workshops or lectures, I'd wait for the moment David would chime in with a comment or question that would suddenly reframe or shine a spotlight on something that was just under the surface. He’d cut through the noise, getting nods and chuckles along the way as he’d gesticulate with his arms—showing us how to enjoy our intellectual labors instead of being so serious. He was able to comment really thoughtfully on such a wide range of subjects and disciplines.

When I decided to move from legal philosophy to legal history, on a subject and period no one in the program worked on, David generously agreed to be my advisor. He never skipped a beat. He always remembered where the project stood and the nuances of what I was trying to say—which means the world to a struggling PhD student, not having to perennially catch your advisor up. I always left meetings with him feeling totally encouraged and supported, and he never let me leave without a humorous comment that put a genuine smile on my face.

I’ll never forget the self-deprecating humor he somehow managed to pull off despite his obvious accomplishment and many accolades. His wit was off the charts! So quick and so clever. I’ll miss him dearly, what a hole he’s left in our lives.

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That David was a kind soul, a generous mentor, and a sterling human being cannot be doubted. It's disappointing at how inadequate such praise feels. There is irony in trying to capture our love for David in writing. How can we boil down decades of dry jokes, unconditional love, and crackling intellect into such a wee spot of text? It seems quixotic, but I cannot loosen my grip on the practice, not even a bit. I'm sure David would chime in here to say something like "well, that seems like a waste of time. You should devote yourself to something more worthwhile, like snipe hunting or hatching rocks."

Whenever I was one of his research assistants, he always treated the job a "a covert form of wealth redistribution between professoriate and starving academic peasantry." Even if he did have need of our help, it was always delivered with his trademark self-deprecation, "oh I'd appreciate it if you looked at this constitution. If you have the time, energy, and there's nothing better on television that afternoon." I think every single one of us logged extra hours, just to be of help to this dear dear man.

David, we will miss you. No matter how much you protest, we will not cease missing you nor rejoicing in your memory.

-Griffin Brunk

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Oh, this is such a loss! David Lieberman had a very distinctive voice, both when speaking and writing. He always combined a simply unfair amount of wit & cleverness with generous dollops of tenderness and compassion. We are all already keenly missing that voice--and the way he would take time to raise his eyebrows and twinkle at you a bit before dispensing the joke. Just to remind us, here are a few examples of David being David that I found in my inbox (and I encourage others to contribute more of these!):

Invitations were always lively, as if the party started as soon as we were all even THINKING of getting together: “Will you and the available ladies be able to join us for a Pesah seder on Friday, April 22 (first night).  as per usual, the evening will be more chaotic than devout, which may (we hope) add to the appeal.”

And in November 2016: “We are available on all the dates that have been circulated thus far: November 11, November 19, December 2, December 9, December 10. However, we firmly resist any implication that this availability indicates anything other than a very active and vibrant social calendar!”

Then there was the AFTERMATH of a dinner, when debates that had started around the table were considered (and possibly settled?) via email. After one vivid discussion about whether a local Chinese restaurant was really offering (as David claimed) the quintessentially German dish (as Eric saw it) of “pig knuckle”: “The only benefit of this long delay in writing is that I can now correct a grievous error concerning culinary delights in Berkeley. Having recently returned to China Village on Solano Avenue, I discovered that the alleged ‘pig knuckle’ is in fact ‘pork shoulder’. What was I thinking! Thank goodness that you did not respond to my bogus information by dropping everything and heading to the restaurant. We shall all have to travel to Munich instead.”

When you asked David for help on an academic project, he gave it! But some ribbing might also be involved. Here is David when I asked him a question about Bentham some years ago: “no surprise whatsoever that your thoughts have turned to Bentham.  the proper response is to offer a program of therapy and de-programming, before the affliction takes hold.  (you'll be moved, but only briefly, to an undisclosed location in Montana; you will not be allowed to bring any personal items; etc.)”

Finally, as was said at the service yesterday, David himself is one of the only people who could possibly help us navigate our way through this tragic and sudden loss. When Eric’s father died suddenly a few years ago, David wrote something that I think does apply to what David’s beloved people are going through now: “I'm so sorry to hear about your father's death. I'm sure this is the way for a life to end - still healthy and mentally active. Still, I'm sure it leaves a painful hole and that the process of adjustment will take a while. I hope it's as smooth process for everyone in your family. You will be in our thoughts.”

David Lieberman’s own life certainly was still vigorous and active to its very end—he relished life and was so glad to be sharing it with all the people he enjoyed and loved. “PLEASE JOIN THE CHAOS!” was a classic Lieberman/Brownstein Hanukah invitation line. David always appreciated the deep bonds of love and humor that underlie the chaos of a loving family—or indeed, any group of people who truly care about each other. David, David’s voice, and David’s family will surely be much in our thoughts in the coming days, months, and years. Carol, George, Hannah, Aaron--we love you and mourn with you. --Anne Nesbet

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David Lieberman was, and remains, one of the most extraordinary and impressive human beings I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.  From my first day at UC Berkeley, David Lieberman went out of his way to be a friend, a mentor, to offer sage advice, and to suggest better paths forward than I ever would have thought of.  He has always been so selfless, and such a model academic, departmental leader, citizen, and teacher.  And he was funny.  Every time he spoke at law school or JSP events, he put everyone at ease with his (usually self-deprecating) humor and grace.  Through his support for and guidance of others, he earned an unparalleled level of respect and love among his colleagues and students. When I was chair of JSP, I regularly turned to David for guidance in handling various problems, and he always helped me to see the best way forward.   In the wake of his horrible bicycle accident six years ago, he somehow managed still to have such a positive outlook.  I feel so privileged to have been David’s colleague and friend, and to have learned (I hope) from his wisdom and guidance.  Carol, George, Hannah, and Aaron, my heart goes out to you and I am so very sorry for your tragic loss.  We will all miss David, and we are all so much better for having known him.

Laurie Edelman

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What a loss to us all. He got many of us through the JSP as the most human and humane of advisors. I feel lucky to have had dinner with him in March, which reminded me of our collective debt.  And what a model he remains, as a teacher, scholar and person.

--Tom Ginsburg

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I have known David for as long as I can remember – he was already my parents’ friend before I was born – and losing him feels like losing family. Memories of David at dinners and Passovers punctuate my memories of growing up. Later, as I started to think about the sort of adult I wanted to grow into, David’s example came to mind. Throughout my childhood he had been a presence of warmth, generosity, and intelligence; I loved being in his company and saw how much my parents and his friends and family did too.

Since moving across the country for college, one of the first things I wanted to do each time I returned home to Berkeley was to see David. I’m devastated that now I won’t be able to. In grieving him, I’ve found small consolation in the idea that David’s memory will live so strongly in my mind. While he was alive, when I wanted to act the right way I often wondered what David would do in my situation. That guiding light, at least, will live on.

–Oliver Riskin-Kutz

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David with my daughter, celebrating a special occasion with friends in April 2016. -- Karen Tani

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David with my daughter, celebrating a special occasion with friends in April 2016. -- Karen Tani

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I am devastated to hear of David's passing. My love to Carol and his three children, of whom he spoke constantly and with over-brimming love. I first met him as a very unsure international graduate student in the Berkeley history dept. His 18thC British state history course was a highlight and his kindness to me, and intuition about me and my circumstances, kept me afloat more often than he ever knew. I hated reading Blackstone in his course but briefly considered switching to that topic so I could have him as my advisor. I'm glad I didn't, because this way I could have him instead as a friend. I am so grateful he kept up with me in Australia all these many years. I can't bear to think he will no longer visit. May his memory be a blessing.
Kate Fullagar, Berkeley 1998-2004.

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My first memory of David was from early 2011, when I was interviewing for a job at Berkeley. I remember that he picked me up in the family mini van to take me to my “job talk” dinner and that he immediately put me at ease with his self-deprecating humor. I seem to remember him joking about whether he should actually be driving at night(?!) It was somehow funny and not scary. During the job search process, David also went out of way to be helpful and kind. I remember that he gave me a great walking tour of the campus. He was proud of the campus’s beauty and all its hidden gems. Talking with David (and his good pal Harry Scheiber) was what really helped me appreciate what set Berkeley apart and made it a world-class institution. I felt very proud later that year when I joined the faculty.

Those first few years at Berkeley presented a steep learning curve for me and I did not always feel confident. But David, I remember, always treated me like a "jewel in the crown." He would introduce me to others as a great legal historian and go out of his way to include me, whether that was connecting me with members of the History Department or inviting me to JSP seminars to talk about my work. I like to think — I hope — that I grew into the scholar and teacher David always thought I was. But I probably would not have done so but for David’s generosity and mentorship.

As I think about how David helped me as a mentor and friend, I am especially grateful for what he taught me about service (aka administrative/committee work). I think that for many academics, service is the least fun part of the job. If you do a competent job at it, you’re rarely thanked and sometimes hated (because you’ve probably made a decision that someone out there doesn’t like). Sometimes it feels like the reward for being decent at service is more service. David was the absolute best when it came to service — so adept that even when tasked with the trickiest assignment, no one hated him at the end of the day. It’s hard to put my finger on why exactly David was such a genius in this regard, but I think it comes down to listening to people with respect, modeling good behavior (David could be counted on to be the "adult in the room"), and just embodying deep commitment to the institution of UC Berkeley. I feel fortunate to have seen David in action and served alongside him. It helped me understand what it means to be a good institutional citizen.

David also taught me about what it means to be a good colleague. I was especially impressed by how he treated colleagues in the twilight of their careers. As others have mentioned, David really honored these older colleagues — not out of some sense of hierarchy, but out of genuine friendship, and because he appreciated what they had given to Berkeley and to the pursuit of knowledge over many years. David didn’t forget people just because they had left the building.

I was fortunate to receive that same thoughtfulness and consideration after I left Berkeley. During those dreary months of the pandemic, David stayed in regular touch. He updated me on what was happening with mutual friends and asked after my husband and “the prodigies” (as he affectionately and unwarrantedly called my kids). When I visited Berkeley, he insisted on making his home available to me. I feel so fortunate to have stayed there on occasion and witnessed the beautiful life he and Carol had together.

To Carol — what a gift it was to see you and David together. You understood and accepted each other; you cared deeply for each other’s wellbeing; you made each other laugh, even during really hard times. I loved seeing how much David loved you and appreciated your talents (like your amazing ability to go into happy, nurturing pre-school teacher mode as soon as the occasion called for it). Thank you for giving me something to aspire for in my own marriage. David was a blessing in my life, and you are, too.

Love,
Karen Tani

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I didn’t work with David directly, and I had not been too much in touch with him since leaving Berkeley. But this week I have found myself thinking about him again and again. I now realize how much I appreciated him. It is his goodness that has stayed with me.

He was a wonderful presence when I was at JSP. He was kind, so funny, with his mischievous grin, and always full of self-deprecating wit (which helped us feel welcome and included).

I often remember how once, when one of the students in our grad seminar on 18th century political theory asked to be excused so as to attend a hearing of the 9th circuit at the Law School, David grudgingly let him go but then remarked to the rest of us how a seminar on Jeremy Bentham was a much rarer and more significant event than a court hearing.

I am thinking of all of you at JSP, and of his family.

-Alex Huneeus

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Reading all these beautiful posts, I couldn’t help but feel jealous of those who were able to know David for several decades. Even though I only overlapped with him for two, I can say that as I grew up, he was a source of light and warmth, and far from being just one of the various adults in my parents’ circles, he seemed to me like the uncle I never had. As my father said,
holidays – especially Passover seders - at the Lieberman-Brownsteins were a centerpiece of my childhood, and they are one of the things about home I have missed the most since leaving.  Although I wish I could have known him for a longer span of my adult years, witnessing his
abounding kindness as a child has shown me what kind of adult I should try to be, and I will carry that reminder with me my whole life.
- Madeleine Riskin-Kutz

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David gave me a keen appreciation for the common law that has always informed my understanding and teaching. His exuberant (and often hilarious) exposition of Blackstone, Bentham, Montesquieu, and the rest made TA’ing for him a great joy. His work was deceptively expository, however, because he always convinced you, layer by layer, of the deep humanity of law. Perhaps that is because he was such a deeply kind human himself, devoting himself to his students with care and follow-through and diligence — especially to those of us who lacked some or all of those qualities! He was also a good friend. I remember one delightful evening when he and Carol introduced us to Dungeness Crab — and I could barely eat for laughing at his sharp, self-deprecating wit. May love surround all of those who mourn this wonderful man.

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I was shocked and saddened to learn of David's passing. today. I've known him for 30 years. He was my History PhD advisor and became a true friend whose influence played a very significant influence in my life. He was so gracious and bright. And supportive. Finding humor even in the midst of his own pain. I loved our lunches together at the former campus art museum (I know Carol, the structure was iffy at the best of times!) and before I moved back to the Boston area after almost 30 years in the Bay Area (the time I knew David), I was so pleased to realized that my Airbnb was just down the road from your home. I had such a nice time chatting and having tea, and discussing the pink flamingos and the family. He truly loved you George, Hannah and Aaron and especially Carol. It was also a delight to leave new Havdalah candles in your LFL. I was so looking forward to getting together after the COVID situation got better. I hope he received the post card I sent last month keeping him up to date. I did not keep up corresponding very well so caught up with trying to settle things here. And I knew it was hard for him to write, but I hope he knew until the end that he had he had a firm place in my heart. I loved him. May his memory truly be for a blessing. I like to think of he and my late father chatting. They were both gentle, wise and kind souls who had endured so much and fought valiantly back. May all of you be supported at this difficult time. Particularly near the chaggim.
Much love, Patricia Lin

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When I arrived in Berkeley in 2001, I was so lucky to have David teach my JSP Foundation Seminar. We discussed law and morality. David's incisive intellect and excellent questions were cloaked in so much kindness and such a delightful, exuberant sense of humor, that we all felt welcome and embraced, rather than intimidated. David was also the first professor in my life who invited us over to his home. I still remember him reading Durkheim aloud and, when Durkheim wrote, "it thus follows," to giggle, and say, "no! It does NOT follow!" and have all of us laugh with the freedom of permission to question the giants of the field. He was such a kind and wise mentor.  A great and warm light has dimmed.
--Hadar Aviram

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David and I interacted often over the years during activities of the Kadish Center at Berkeley Law, and I cherished those encounters. I was crushed to learn of his passing, and still can't get my mind around the very sad fact that he is no longer with us.

On academic occasions David was invariably learned, thoughtful, patient, wry, and generous, someone whose presence lent gravitas and grace to the proceedings he was taking part in. It must have been challenging for him to put up with the shallowness and historical ignorance of those of us who crashed Kadish events from the philosophy department, but if that was the case he never let us know it. He was also a brilliant citizen of the academic polis that we inhabited together, someone whose judgment about institutional matters I found to be impeccable. (He preceded me by a few years as Chair of Berkeley's Budget Committee, and one of the challenges of that assignment was the thought that I would be measured in some degree by his intimidating example.) I admired him immensely, for his keen intellect, his warm and generous character, and the exemplary way he led his life.

David and I both ended up in Beijing in May of 2012, on separate trips that just happened to overlap in that city. We managed to get together several times that week during gaps in our respective schedules, and those were wonderful occasions, the stimulation of David's intellect and gentle humor intensified somehow by our presence in a location that was pretty foreign to both of us. We navigated the subway system, had delicious Peking duck at one of the most venerable establishments for that dish in the city, and explored one of the fascinating hutong districts together. I have uploaded a photo I took of him during an expedition we took to visit the Summer Palace, and can't look at it without vividly recalling how lovely it was to spend time there in his wise and gracious company.

Jay Wallace

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I can remember the exact moment when I met David. I walked into the Selznick seminar room a few minutes early for a collective job interview with the JSP faculty and found David already there. As I sat down, I remember asking him what to expect.  David smiled warmly and said in that wonderfully wry way of his, “Oh come on, you think we have a plan here?”  I laughed, he laughed, and he instantly put me at ease. The light joke belied the seriousness with which he took all things JSP and revealed much of what made David such an extraordinary person: warmth, gentle humor, compassion, brilliance, support, and incredible timing.  I would see these qualities on display in public and in private countless times over the next fifteen years.  In front of the faculty, he could defuse a tense discussion with humor and then diplomatically propose a brilliant path forward. In private, he offered incisive advice borne of his decades as an astute administrator. Whatever the context, his good cheer, generosity, and wit knew no bounds.  The world is a better place for him having lived in it. I miss him terribly.

-- Cal Morrill

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David was a man of great generosity, intelligence, empathy and the most amazing sense of sarcasm imbued with love – he could take you down a peg and make you feel like the luckiest person on the planet.  His wit and penchant for finding comedy in moments that would have made others irritated or resentful made him the best of parents and the warmest of friends.  After his terrible bike accident, when it looked like he might never recover the use of his limbs, he showed so much grace – in the hospital I remember being stunned by how solicitous he was towards everyone else – the nurses and his visitors, as if they were the ones to worry about.  There was one particular late afternoon: despite all the drugs, bruises on his face, full neck collar that made him itchy and uncomfortable, the inability to move arms or, almost, his legs, he still had all his dignity and his sense of humor.  “I always hated the Book of Job,” he said.
Eric Naiman

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I have been doubly lucky to be David’s colleague and friend for the last 24 years.  Lucky, of course, in the way all his friends have been lucky: we were blessed with his unconditional love, support, wisdom, brilliance, humor, and charm.  In these days of shock and heartbreak since his accident , my mind keeps taking me back to conversations with him, about everything from contract theory and English history, to travel, food, and wine, to babies, cats, and dogs, to my work and his, to students and courses we shared, to questions of campus, local, national and geo-politics.

My children, who also grew up in his love, for whom Jewish holidays meant in great part celebrating with the Lieberman-Brownsteins, are as bereft as Jessica and I .  David long ago crossed from colleague to friend and friend to family.  How lucky I am to have known him, how lucky we all are.

But the second way of being lucky is just knowing that a person like David can exist.  If I didn’t know David, and you were to tell me that there could be a person who was unfailingly courteous, generous, and warm in every instance, with everyone he met, I wouldn’t believe it.  Surely it was for show, surely there were exceptions.  But, as I work through my memories, I literally can’t think of a single instance when I heard David be short-tempered with someone, or gossip meanly about someone, or even fail to wholeheartedly celebrate another’s success, or any of the other forms of Schadenfreude to which we humans are usually susceptible.

Jessica and I have often mentioned to each other the same thing we saw, in the depths of David’s misery while at the hospital after his bicycle accident, when paralyzed at the time from the neck down, he somehow managed to learn the names of every nurse and orderly. Despite his pain, he would ask after their families. When requesting the smallest of things (some water, help moving) he would do so with the same warm courtesy as in the best of his health.

And all this without being an insufferable prig, a drag on the party.  Everything was better with David.  So I feel lucky knowing that a person like David can exist – not because I’m likely to encounter others, but because the memory of David can maybe move me to try to be a little bit better, a little more like David.  At least that’s the way I’d like to repay his love for us.

--Chris Kutz

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I’m shocked to learn that David has died.  We’ve lost a beloved colleague, one whose kindness, generosity, intelligence, and good humor buoyed everyone around him.

David figures prominently in one of the happiest set of memories from my time here at Berkeley.  In around 2010, a group of faculty met frequently over the course of a semester to talk about what a research initiative focused on value might look like.  Time after time, David would help us avoid cliché, dig deeper, and imagine the possibilities more capaciously.  His voice would swoop way up and then back down as he spoke—the music of his intellectual excitement—and when he listened, his steady gaze and smile would reassure the speaker that he was all attention.  His high spirits were infectious, yet his deep seriousness helped us all think harder and better.

It's a terrible wrench to realize I won’t get to talk with him again.  I will miss him sorely.

Janet Broughton

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I first met David when I took a 6-month sabbatical at the JSP in 1985. He recently had come from Cambridge on to the staff of the Faculty. Self-conscious provincial that I was, I was daunted by this young lad’s (31 at the time) eloquence, erudition and also by his wit. I tried to keep up, dropping as many names as I could. He always knew more than I did, but never felt the need to let me know that.

Over these years, my relationship with, and appreciation of David moved to another plane. The stimulation of his intelligence was no less, but it became overlaid with an ever-deepening whole-person affection, which in my case at least came to be love. I found many more occasions and excuses to visit the JSP, drawn initially by affection and admiration for the ‘old guard’, Shelly Messinger, Philip Selznick and Sandy Kadish, with whom David had the deepest of connections. In recent years, I witnessed, first from afar and then up close, the stoical, heroic is not too strong a word, ways in which he coped with the devastating impact of his bicycle accident, and added unreserved admiration to the multitude of other reasons to love him.

He in turn came to Australia three times, twice with Carol - once as a research visitor to my law school, once on a visit to Adelaide University, and once just to come. One of those visits, when he stayed with us, coincided with a tragic portent of his own death, just after my son’s partner was killed in a road accident. I warned David that it might be uncomfortable for him to be around this grief, and perhaps it was, but we had no inkling. Only gentle, unobtrusive, condolence, advice, care, help and love.

For David was a man rich in love. It came easy to him, not undiscriminatingly but easily: for his friends, his students, many of his colleagues, and above all his family. We often talked like old guys about family things, even before we became old guys. But tragically, this unimaginable thing has happened, and he didn’t become old enough.

David was simply one of the finest persons I have known: morally, intellectually and in the less sung virtues and talents of humanity and deep friendship. He was wise, loving, loved and, to repeat, so, so fine. It was a privilege to have known him, and such a profound loss now to miss him.

--Martin Krygier

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MEMORIES OF DAVID LIEBERMAN

Meeting David Lieberman was my lucky day.  It was 1984.  He had just been appointed to the Jurisprudence and Social Policy program at Berkeley and had an office in the charming old Center for the Study of Law and Society.

I was in the first intake of JSP students in 1979 and I’d returned to Berkeley for a sabbatical to work on the thesis that became the book.  I was working on rule of law ideas in the unlikely setting of the penal colony England had established in New South Wales in 1788.  Everyone said I had to meet David Lieberman.

He was every bit as good as they said.  A specialist in 18th century British political ideas, he seemed to be on first name terms with Adam Smith, Bill Blackstone, and some younger friends too like John Pocock and his mentor, Quentin Skinner at Cambridge.  He was incredibly generous with his time.  He let me borrow the four volume facsimile copy of Blackstone’s Commentaries on his bookshelves; he sent a note after one of our sessions referring me to passages in the Commentaries where Blackstone discussed rule of law ideas.

Those first meetings got longer and he was subjected to multiple drafts of chapters which led to recommendations about articles to read or friends of his that I could follow-up.  He was even considerate about the locations: Adam Smith specialist Knud Haakonsen was one of David’s many colleagues and he just happened to be working at the Australian National University in Canberra.

David’s warmth and care for his older colleagues in their later years was so impressive.  He kept me abreast of the health news of Shelly Messinger and Philip Selznick.  On a couple of my return visits we picked Sandy Kadish up from his house for lunch.  It was clear that David had been a regular visitor.

We became lifelong friends.  Carol and David visited Australia twice.  Last time was just pre-Covid.  Kin and I spent a very relaxing few days with him and Carol at the quaintly named coastal town of Port Fairy.  We were looking forward to more visits but very sadly he won’t be there next time.  His many friends and colleagues in the Southern Hemisphere are going to miss him.

David Neal

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I can still hear David's laugh (veering on a shush, if a laugh can do that), at his retirement party, as his colleagues gushed, not just about his obvious intellect, but about his humility, his grace, and his generosity -- in time given to his students, his colleagues, and the university.

For my part, I thanked David at that event for teaching me to teach -- for showing me how undergraduate students (and graduate students like me) could engage with surprisingly dense original sources and even enjoy it -- and for being the model of a quiet, but committed institution-builder, academic that I still strive to be. I'm glad David got to hear some of how much he was loved just a few months ago and heartbroken that he had barely started to enjoy retirement.

- Keramet Reiter

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David suffered a very serious bicycle accident several years ago that initially left him paralyzed below the waist.  During his lengthy recovery he overcame the paralysis with unflagging effort.  I helped organize a team of his colleagues who stayed by David’s bedside 24/7 while he was in the ICU, which was a tribute to how much he was beloved.  I often remarked to David during that time that he was funnier, wiser, and better spirited than I was on my best day.  David continued to demonstrate those traits throughout our years of friendship.
-- Henry Hecht

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I can't think of David without gratitude. I was a student of David's (depending on how you count it) for more than a decade - from the time I arrived at JSP in August 2007 to the filing of my dissertation in summer 2018. I was not an easy student. I also almost didn't finish - I left JSP in 2012 and never fully returned, scraping my dissertation together in between full-time jobs and on parental leave. David's patience, good-humor, compassion, and dedication were endless.

Every time I left a meeting with him I felt better about myself and my project (or rather what my project could be, as he often gracefully and kindly called attention to the ways it could be improved) than when I walked into his office. He welcomed me into his home for Thanksgiving, he gently redirected my frustrations at the university and the world toward research productivity, and he was there -- present and joking, unassuming but every historical claim or criticism impeccably sourced and precisely phrased.

David's generosity to me (and I know to other students) was immense: well after a reasonable person would have given up on me, and when he had absolutely no institutional obligation to do so, David read my whole damn dissertation not once but twice as I limped toward a finished draft at the latest possible date before graduation became administratively impossible. Over that decade he talked me through so many moments of academic crisis, and cajoled and coordinated the remaining members of my committee to a place where finally, I could say I'd earned a doctorate. I have that degree because of him.

More than what he meant for me (although I think that it's pretty typical of what he meant to a lot of people), David was just a good person: good to those around him and wanting only good for the world, in a way that I think is actually quite rare. Rarer still for this open-hearted goodness to be combined with his sharpness, of both humor and thought. The world is a much worse place without David, but it is a much better place, and my own life is so much better, for having had him in it.

--Megan Wachspress

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David and I started at Berkeley the same year, and he soon became a beloved friend.  He was so wise, so kind, and such good fun.  Over time, what had begun as a collegial relationship deepened, as our wives and families became friends.

David was a consummate friend.  In my most trying times, he always knew what to say, and even the most difficult advice was delivered with love, compassion and tact.  He was also a remarkable colleague, who treated even the most difficult among us with respect and kindness, while keeping clearly in mind the right outcome for the institution.  His diplomatic skills were awesome--he could make the lion lie down with the lamb, all while making the lion feel powerful and the lamb secure.  And his sense of humor was legendary--no one has ever made me laugh harder.  Somehow he always did the right thing, but without a hint of sanctimony or judgment.

Perhaps to a fault, he never felt the need to blow his own horn.  But we who were his friends and colleagues saw him and knew how lucky we were to have him in our midst.  It seems particularly unfair that he should be taken now, after he had put so much courageous energy into his recovery from a near fatal accident, and when he was poised to enjoy retirement with Carol and his beloved children, of whom he was so proud.  Our hearts go out to them.  A beautiful light has gone out.  May his memory be for a blessing.

Steve Bundy

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David taught me as an undergraduate in the smallest class of my life. At least, the class felt that small thanks to David. He co-supervised my honors thesis, advised me post-grad, and then I was lucky enough to have his guidance as one of his graduate students. In countless ways, David taught all of his students the importance of patience, kindness, and generosity. He was patient with me. He was kind to me. He was generous to me. I cannot deny that I miss David terribly, but I am deeply grateful to have known him as I did and to carry on the lessons he instilled.
--Anthony Carrasco

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From the Jurisprudence & Social Policy Program/Legal Studies

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From the Jurisprudence & Social Policy Program/Legal Studies

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David Lieberman, our beloved friend, colleague, teacher, mentor, and conscience, died in a hiking accident on Saturday, September 10th, in Lassen National Park, where he was staying with his wife Carol.  Although taken from us far too soon, he died doing something he loved, with people he loved, and in a place he loved.

David was a member of the Berkeley faculty since 1984, when he joined the Law School’s still-new Jurisprudence & Social Policy Program as a specialist in the history of legal and social thought.  American by birth but English by training, he brought rigor, insight, and capacious knowledge to the study of the last several centuries of law and legal institutions.  Recognized internationally for his scholarship on Jeremy Bentham and the history of English constitutionalism, he lectured and taught around the world, from China to Israel to France to Australia.

But his home and his heart were in Berkeley.  Here, David laid many of the foundation stones of Berkeley’s graduate interdisciplinary law program, serving as head of the program, revising its curriculum, teaching its core courses, and advising scores of students across the university.  In his undergraduate seminars and lectures, notably his courses on the history of punishment, and through his mentorship, David also touched the lives of countless students, especially many who were the first in their families to attend university.  Just two months before his untimely death, and after 38 years at JSP, David retired as the James W. and Isabel Coffroth Professor of Jurisprudence.

David was known for his superb judgment and equable temperament.  He served, among other roles, as the chair of the Faculty Senate Budget Committee, a position that provides both the greatest honor and the greatest responsibility within Berkeley’s system of shared academic governance.  Because of his diplomatic skills, he was given the unenviable task of rebuilding the then-troubled Jewish Studies program at Berkeley, at which he brilliantly succeeded.  In recognition of his role as an institutional anchor at Berkeley, he received both the Faculty Senate’s Faculty Service Award and the Law School’s Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award.

David’s profound scholarly and professional accomplishments should not distract from his most important quality: he was the most generous and dependable friend and colleague any of us could hope for.  Each person who knew him has a story of David’s exemplary courtesy, respect, and loving care, shown in moments both difficult and easy, and usually accompanied by his infectious laughter.  No one left his presence without a lifted spirit.  In his own moment of greatest vulnerability, following a bicycle accident in 2016 that threatened to leave him paralyzed, David equally gracefully accepted the help of so many, and with that he worked heroically to recover his ability to lead the life he loved in full.  For David also loved exploring nature, music, food, wine, cycling, skiing, theater, and foreign cities.  And most of all he loved his family.

We invite anyone who knew David to leave a note here about what he meant to you.  David’s family suggests that anyone interested in making a donation in his memory could do so to the Beth El Homeless Meal program, where David worked; the Santa Clara Spinal Injury Center, which helped him recover from his accident; or the Jurisprudence & Social Policy Program, where funds will be directed to help students.