"Half brother, half son." That is how Justice Louis D. Brandeis, in 1925, described his feelings for his younger friend Felix Frankfurter, whose judicial robe was inherited by Judge Charles E. Wyzanski and later left to me. "Half brother, half son" is also how I have come to think of Scott Kafker since we met in July, 1985.

I was then 38 and Scott was 26. I had practiced law in Washington D.C. and Boston. I had also been a Special Assistant to Attorney General Edward Levi, the former President of the University of Chicago who had done so much to restore confidence in the Department of Justice in the aftermath of Watergate. More recently, I had been Deputy United States Attorney and Chief of the Public Corruption Unit in United States Attorney Bill Weld's office, where I worked closely with Bob Cordy. I had just become a United States District Judge and I needed a law clerk for the following year. So I wrote to Gerhardt Casper, the Dean of the University of Chicago Law School, looking for prospects and I heard from Scott.

Scott had already graduated and had acquired a clerkship with Charles Levin, a distinguished Justice of the Supreme Court of Michigan. He was, however, planning to move to Boston, wanted to do public interest litigation and, he wrote, thought "a district court clerkship with [me] would be an ideal experience."

Scott presented the conventional credentials for a competitive candidate. He had graduated from Amherst College with Honors and been an editor of the Chicago Law Review.

Scott arrived for his interview in a spiffy new suit. I later learned Lea Ann had dressed him up for the occasion.

In that interview, Scott told me about his respect for his parents, both historians and teachers, and how his mother had become a lawyer.

We also talked about my friend Bill Ward, who had brought his extraordinary ability and integrity to the leadership of a Commission, which did exemplary work investigating public corruption in Massachusetts, after serving as President of Amherst while Scott was an undergraduate.

A month later Bill committed suicide. After reading a piece I published in the Boston Globe on the day of the memorial service for Bill, Scott wrote me a letter that reveals something meaningful, I think, about the man who becomes a judge today. Scott said:

I am very glad you wrote such a moving tribute to John William Ward. By the time I arrived at Amherst Ward had been its President almost a decade. His intellectual and moral leadership had transformed the school. Despite opposition from an outraged Board of Trustees, he had led a protest against the Viet Nam War and championed the drive for coeducation. He also renewed Amherst's commitment to minorities, a commitment that had brought Charles Houston, William Hastie, and a number of other minority students to Amherst when the doors were closed at other elite schools.

As Scott knew, but few now remember, William Hastie was our nation's first African American Federal Court of Appeals Judge. Edward Levi was among his many admirers.

Scott and I also talked about Edward. Scott had taken Edward's legendary Introduction to Legal Reasoning course at the University of Chicago Law School. He has, I know, recently been rereading Edward's classic book by the same name.

Scott reported that, like generations of students before him, he had been awed and intimidated by Edward's mind and manner. Although he had made a good grade, Scott confessed that he understood only a small fraction of what Edward had been trying to teach. I knew what Scott was talking about. Edward's Delphic brilliance had often kept me and many others anxious and uncertain about whether we had understood him as well.

Finally, Scott and I had an excellent discussion about Brandeis and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. I had been reading a lot by and about both of them since being nominated to become a judge the year before.

Of course, I offered Scott the clerkship. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

This is not to say that Scott was the perfect clerk on day one. In speaking at the celebration arranged by my clerks for my tenth anniversary, Scott recalled his first week at work. He said:

My initial assignment was to write a bench memo on a motion to suppress involving a woman named Pirelli who said she was illegally coerced into allowing the police to search her bags at Logan Airport. The main reason for her being stopped was apparently that she was wearing blue jeans and yellow stilletto heels on the Eastern shuttle. Apparently, the only person more prejudiced than the cop was me. Before the hearing, I gave the Judge a bench memo in which I not only set out the law, but found the facts as well. The Judge suggested it might help us to listen to the evidence first. It was not an auspicious beginning.

It was, however, a lesson in the importance of finding facts based on credible evidence that the trial judges whose decisions Scott will soon be reviewing should find encouraging.

Scott's work with me was excellent. Our collaboration in New Life Baptist Church v. East Longmeadow, a very difficult First Amendment case, educated me to understand the potential of a law clerk to contribute to the administration of justice and to the life of the otherwise isolated trial judge. With invaluable assistance from Scott, I decided the case in favor of the plaintiffs, who believed they would spend eternity in hell if they obeyed a law that required that they submit the private school they conducted as part of their church for approval by the local school board. I know that Scott shared, and remembers, my deep disappointment when my findings of fact were altered on appeal and I was reversed. The pain was not diminished much by the thought that Holmes and Brandeis were known in their time as the "Great Dissenters."

However, many of my most vivid memories of Scott in the year he clerked for me have nothing to do with specific cases. I recall the Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board calling Scott to commend him on an excellent law review article that Scott published in 1987. I remember Scott patiently teaching my ten-year old, learning disabled son, Jonathan, how to use the computer, which proved essential to Jonathan achieving his significant academic potential. And I recall Scott going with me in 1986 to the memorial service at Harvard for Charles Wyzanski, where we heard Edward Levi, Derek Bok, McGeorge Bundy, and Paul Freund speak movingly about how a person could live a large and fulfilling life as a judge for 45 years.

In the year Scott served as my clerk, he demonstrated much of the promise that has brought him here today. I would not, however, say he was perfectly prepared to join the judiciary when he finished his clerkship in 1987. Scott's judgment was still somewhat erratic.

For example, he demonstrated real wisdom in persuading Lea Ann to marry him, scheduling his wedding for Labor Day weekend, and planning to take his honeymoon before beginning another arduous job However, when he told me that he was going to Bermuda for his honeymoon, I said I thought he would be there during the height of the hurricane season. That had not occurred to Scott. But, he assured me, the hotel rates were very modest. Of course, a major hurricane hit Bermuda while Scott and Lea Ann were there. That, however, only tested and strengthened their affection for each other, as another, more serious challenge to Scott's health would several years later.

On Scott's last day as a my clerk, I gave him the book that I have given each of my clerks -- Mr. Justice Holmes, by Francis Biddle. Biddle was Holmes' law clerk. He went on to become Attorney General of the United States, and Edward Levi was his Special Assistant. I had worked for Edward, and Scott had worked for me. Thus, we were each professionally descended from Holmes -- a fact, I said, that refuted any theory of natural evolution to a higher species.

In addition to expressing my gratitude, I inscribed Scott's volume of Biddle's affectionate biography of Holmes with references to two of the Justice's thoughts. First, I encouraged Scott to "share the passion and action of his times at the peril of being judged not to have lived." Then, again quoting Holmes, I wrote that I hoped Scott would also experience "the secret, isolated joy of the thinker." Today, we know that benediction approached being prophetic.

When Scott went to work at Foley, Hoag & Eliot, I took great pride and pleasure in hearing regularly from Sandy Lynch and Dave Ellis that Scott was an extraordinary associate. But while I had a succession of other fine clerks, including Mike Boudett and Rich Weitzel who were recruited by Scott, I missed Scott a lot.

To be sure, Scott and I played tennis in Boston and when he visited me on Martha's Vineyard. We also began a practice of exchanging recommendations on books. Most recently, Scott suggested two books he was reading -- Founding Brothers, which is about the generation that formed our Constitution, and Code, which explores the implications for constitutional issues, such as the right to privacy, of decisions being made today almost covertly by computer programmers.

But all of this was not enough. So I gave Scott the title of "Clerk for Life," which Frankfurter had bestowed upon one of his favorites, and got Scott involved in some of my extrajudicial activities.

In helping me plan a program on the trial of Adolph Eichmann, Scott earned the admiration of Margaret Marshall, one of the panelists who was then the President of the Boston Bar Association. Scott also worked with me to develop a course on the role of the judge in our American, democratic system, which I taught for several years at the Harvard and Boston College Law Schools.

I in turn tried to help Scott follow in his parents' footsteps as he sought an appointment to become a law school teacher. That process was interrupted, however, when Scott developed cancer in early 1990. Fortunately, the disease was treatable and successfully treated. But, as Scott recently testified at his confirmation hearing, the cancer made him think deeply about what he wanted to do with his life. He decided he wanted to dedicate much of it to public service.

By late 1990, Scott was cured and Bill Weld had been elected Governor. Although I was not involved in the campaign, my family and I spent the weekend after the election with Bill and his family in New Hampshire. As those of you who read the Boston Globe might expect, we spent most of our time taking I.Q. tests. In between, however, we talked about how Bill might staff his new administration.

I encouraged Bill's interest in recruiting Bob Cordy to become his counsel. I also told Bill about Scott and urged him to find a way to employ his talents. Scott subsequently became Bob's Deputy at the beginning of the Weld-Cellucci administration.

It is, perhaps, not surprising that in that capacity Scott acquired the respect of the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, Bob Cordy, and Mark Robinson, another former colleague of mine who was then serving as the Governor's Chief of Staff. What is striking to me, however, is the degree to which Scott also earned the respect of individuals who might have been expected to be adversaries of the Weld-Cellucci administration.

I have recently spoken about Scott with the Senate President, Tom Birmingham, and the Speaker of the House, Tom Finneran. The Senate President described how impressed he was with Scott's mastery of detail, and how others marveled at their discussions of the nuances of the labor arbitration provisions of the Education Reform Bill. Speaker Finneran used almost the identical words to describe his work with Scott in developing the legislation that reformed the Workmen's Compensation System, and generously testified before the Governor's Council on Scott's behalf.

Scott's experience with the leaders of the Executive and Legislative branches of our state government gave him, I know, an enhanced appreciation for the political process. It also reinforced his understanding of the important, but defined and limited role of the judiciary in our democracy.

Scott's success as Deputy Counsel to the Governor led to his appointment, in 1993, as the General Counsel of Massport. There, Scott became probably the first executive in the history of the organization to decline a credit card and a car. At Massport Scott worked with, and against, a wide range of lawyers on a wide range of issues. He also came to know the real people in the many communities impacted by Massport's activities. And for the past five summers, Scott sponsored and mentored a John William Ward Public Service Fellow from the Boston Latin School. As Mark Robinson, who became Chairman of Massport, reports, over time Scott developed a wonderful reputation for having good judgment, as well as great skill.

All of this has led to the high honor and opportunity Scott receives today. He is joining the judiciary, which is an ultimate guardian of the institutions and aspirations that have long made our nation the world's best hope.

Scott has qualities that promise to make him a great judge. He is intelligent, industrious, and intellectually honest. Scott loves the law as living history. Personal experience has given Scott a profound sense of human solidarity with the flawed, vulnerable, sad people who populate our cases and our courthouses.

In Nicky and Matthew, Scott has two rambunctious and irreverent young sons who will, like my boys, prove to be a powerful antidote to the potential plague of judicial arrogance. More significantly, Scott has the genuine understanding and support of a loving wife as he enters a lonely profession.

I commend the Governor and the Lieutenant Governor for selecting Scott, and the Governor's Council for unanimously confirming his nomination. I congratulate Scott's new colleagues on the Massachusetts Appeals Court, for I know Scott will contribute greatly to both their capacity and their collegiality.

I would like to conclude by repeating something I wrote to Scott on the day he arrived to work with me in 1986, and have reiterated to all my law clerks since then.

In 1976, my then employer, Attorney General Edward H. Levi, made the following remarks in introducing the late Judge Henry Friendly [, the highly respected former Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit]. [The Attorney General] said:

The dimensions of the law can be narrow, its directions can be erratic, responsive to whims and fads. The law can be lost in technicality, confused in its purposes. This is not true when law finds its proper spokesman, when the craftsman is combined with the humanist, when the issues of public policy are seen in the light of history, when the spokesman speaks within the defined conception of the role of law, lawyers, and the function of the courts.

Then, I wrote, "Mr. Levi described an ambitious ideal, which I hope you will share with me."

Scott naturally shared that ideal. Today, he embodies it.

Scott will now have the joy and the duty of pursuing that ideal professionally as a judge of the Massachusetts Appeals Court. In the process, our common law and our Commonwealth will be enriched.