The YDN is reporting that "popular" computer science professor Robert Dunne is dead. But "popular" doesn't begin to describe the impact professor Dunne had on us and on the entire Yale community.His lecture course, "Computers and the Law," was among the most widely attended during any given semester, and he always had to turn away many applicants—even seniors—from his two follow-up seminars. Of the six contributors to this blog, all but one took Bob Dunne's lecture; two of us also took both seminars, on privacy and intellectual property in the digital age.
"Computers and the Law" was unlike any other big lecture course. No one comes back from Econ 110 excited about telling his suitemates all about Pareto efficiency and supply and demand curves. I never returned from the so-called "Physics for Poets" ready to start a conversation about conservation of rotational momentum. But after the doors of SSS 114 opened after yet another fascinating Bob Dunne lecture (really a storytelling session), one could always hear groups of students abuzz about the enforceability of contracts or the various defenses to copyright infringement. Thanks to professor Dunne, we lowly undergrads could get excited about not only the technicalities of the law but also the larger intellectual questions concerning the application of legal precedent to new frontiers of technology.
Terminology learned in his classes became part of the everyday vocabulary of this group of friends and even provided the basis for several inside jokes. De minimis, for example, which is part of the fair-use doctrine in copyright law, soon became our hypothetical defense to any number of crimes, such as murder. And professor Dunne's assertion that involuntary intoxication could get one off the hook for just about anything led to our development (in many a lunch conversation) of the "Nibbles Machine," a hamster-powered device that would get the user drunk without his knowledge, leaving him free to exact appropriate revenge on his ex-wife.
The seminars provided an opportunity to interact with professor Dunne in a smaller setting. The only drawback was that when only 20 were gathered around a conference table in Watson on the edge of their seats, he didn't automatically feel the need to be entertaining. But he is truly an expert on his subject, and once he started going into detail about the cases we were studying, or the cases he was working on (though he was always careful to protect the confidentiality of his clients), or even how past classes had dealt with the challenging material, he was at his best as a teacher. I sincerely regret that future generations of Yalies won't get that experience, but I have hope that the textbook he was close to finishing (as of May) will carry on his remarkable legacy in legal pedagogy.
Farewell to one of the true institutions of Yale. Thank you for the inspiration you provided to so many of us.
Requiescat in pace.
[Please feel free to share your own memories of professor Dunne in the comments.]
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