Fearless: A. Bartlett Giamatti and the Battle for Fairness in America

State University of New York Press (2020)

A.Bartlett Giamatti’s life, how he formed his values, and the principles he lived by—as parent, teacher, president of Yale, and commissioner of Baseball—emerge powerfully in Fearless, A. Bartlett Giamatti and the Battle for Fairness in America. To understand him, you need to understand his parents, especially the discrimination endured by his New Haven born father, his grandparents on both sides, especially his father’s southern Italian immigrant parents, and how Bart came to fully define, embrace, and battle for “fairness.”

Based on more than six years of interviews and thorough, often revelatory documentation not previously disclosed by Yale historians, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, Nick Kotz, concluded that in Fearless, “Proto writes with the candor, directness, thoroughness, and passionate pursuit of truth that also characterized Giamatti.” Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro focused on the deliberate destruction and forced relocation of Italian and Jewish immigrant and African American families to serve Yale’s purpose that Giamatti witnessed as a student: “Neighborhoods destroyed. Families displaced. Sterilization justified.” Giamatti declared his own civic and moral imperative to do battle: “Rest,” he wrote, “will come by never resting.”

Giamatti as President elect of Yale University

Sacco and Vanzetti IAMLA Live Discussion Trailer

FULL Sacco and Vanzetti IAMLA Live Discussion

A+E Fearless About Fairness

Interview at Case Memorial Library, Orange, Connecticut (December 14, 2020)

Writing and Speaking Over Time

The substantive range and content of the selected articles and talks speak for themselves—space exploration, baseball, nuclear power, urban culture, basketball, Mexican drug trafficking, Catholic Social Teaching, and others. They reflect what I describe elsewhere—moving sideways, exploring substantive interests and integrating them into what I know. They all share an exploration of culture and underlying values, making judgments among competing social forces, deciding what’s right and risking criticism but not at the loss of ideas. The most personal articles: “The ‘Crimson Horde’ captured the Soul of New Haven”(2008), published on the precise day of the 50th anniversary of the victory celebration and written within months of my brother Richard’s death; and “Preservation of Baseball Tradition is at Stake in Rose Affair”(1989), written from the perspective of having played “third base for Golden Crest during the 1956 season of the Annex Little League.” I also knew Bart Giamatti during his tenure as President of Yale. He died shortly after the article and his decision concerning Pete Rose’s fate.

The most revelatory article: “The Essential Controversy: The Catholic Church, Its Social Teaching in America, and Those Who Have Defined It.” (2005). Writing it provided a useful perspective on what motivated many Catholics toward social justice, sometimes intuitively, who wondered why the Church had moved so dramatically away from an emphasis on its own teaching. The work also provided insight for me into the Supreme Court, as it grew more Catholic in composition, and the broader debate in America about individual, corporate, and governmental duty that continued to inform my writing and actions.

• “The ‘Crimson Horde’ captured the soul of New Haven“, New Haven Register (2008)
•  “PERSPECTIVE: Roberts Took Narrow View of Court’s Power to Decide” (New York Law Journal, September, 2005)
• “Drifting in Space: Values and a Policy Vacuum,” Chicago Tribune (1987)
• “Three Mile Island: A Breach of Faith Not Yet Repaired,” Chicago Tribune (1989)
• “Illicit Plants, Threatening Sovereignty and Home and Abroad,” The Christian Science Monitor (1989)
• “Kaho’olawe: The Lawyer’s Duty” (2005, University of Washington Law School, Seattle)
• “The Essential Controversy: The Catholic Church, Its Social Teaching in America, and Those Who Have Defined It.” Distributed to Members by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (Connecticut), June 15, 2005. Download Catholic Social Teaching.pdf
• “Preservation of Baseball Tradition Is at Stake in Rose Debate.” New Haven Register (July 6, 1989): 19. Download Preservation of Baseball Tradition.pdf
• “Lessons from the American Experience,” Wilton Park, West Sussex England (1994) Download NTProto Lessons of the American Experience.pdf
• “The Idea of Progress and Global Warming: General Motors, the Demise Of Transit, 
and the Duty of Government” Lecture, University of Washington School of Law 
February 4, 2009
• Radio Interview (2006), To A High Court (mp3 audio file)
• Radio Interview (2009), Rights of My People (m4a audio file)

NTP has crafted written legal arguments and broader litigation strategies or presented oral argument in more than thirty-five cases in federal court litigation, primarily in United States Courts of Appeals beginning with SCRAP versus United States of America in 1971, during his time at the United States Department of Justice, and in private practice. He has briefed cases before the Supreme Court of the United States including as amicus curia. His most recent participation in litigation was in Arlington County, Virginia versus United States of America and the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, a highway controversy involving civil rights and environmental violations that ended successfully in 2011. His last oral argument was in 2004 before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond in a controversy involving the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. Substantively, his body of work in the law has involved Constitutional questions, land use, a broad range of environmental statutes, public lands, civil and criminal jurisdictional disputes, urban controversies, Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, historic preservation, foreign affairs, and nuclear power.

Although various of his articles and talks involve the law, NTP’s law review article, “The Opinion Clause and Presidential Decision Making,” (44 Missouri Law Review 185 (1978)), was premised on his exploration of the Opinion Clause, Article II, Sec 2 of the Constitution, in a controversy involving presidential advisers providing guidance on major water projects in North Dakota that reached the United States Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit in St. Louis.

His body of work in teaching is reflected in the syllabi and compilation of substantive, multi-disciplinary readings, documentaries, and educational techniques he has developed in twenty-four years of teaching and lecturing, as visiting lecturer at Yale University and adjunct professor at Georgetown’s Public Policy Institute. In his courses on cities and sprawl he has used, for example, Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie and Frank Norris’ The Pit to imagine Chicago, Christopher Lasch’s The True and Only Heaven to assess family values, Detroit’s urban riots in “Eyes on the Prize,” the insightful urban impulse of The Beats when others embraced suburbia, urban organizing by Saul Alinsky and Martin Luther King in Chicago, and the cultural drive of television’s “Route 66.”