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On January 25, 2014, the University of Iowa College of Law and the Iowa Law Review lost one of their most loyal champions and most distinguished alumni. Professor Randy Bezanson died that Saturday, following a battle with cancer that spanned many more years than his doctors had initially believed possible. I count myself among the countless who are better for having known him.
Randy's time at the Iowa College of Law began thirty years earlier than mine. Holding an undergraduate degree in business from Northwestern University, Randy returned to his home state for law school, enrolling at Iowa in the fall of 1968. Thinking that he would specialize in mergers, he emphasized courses in business and taxation.1 Constitutional law-the field to which he later would devote such a large proportion of his professional energy-was not yet chief among his passions, nor did he yet expect to spend his career in legal education.2 He nevertheless built the kind of record that would open many doors. He served as Editor in Chief of the Iowa Law Review, for example, an experience that he later regarded as central to his legal education. A paper that he wrote for Professor Arthur Bonfield was published in the Drake Law Review,3 marking the first entry in what would become an enviably rich bibliography. In the spring of 1971, he graduated first in his class.
Randy leftIowa City to take two prestigious clerkships in Washington, D.C., first with Judge Roger Robb on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and then with Justice Harry Blackmun on the United States Supreme Court. It was during his time in Washington-as he immersed himself in constitutional controversies and listened to other clerks talk about their own professional ambitions-that Randy began to think seriously about a career in teaching.4 A number of law schools took an interest in him, but his alma mater had the good sense to intervene: Dean Larry Blades telephoned, saying that he had been instructed to make sure Randy didn't go anywhere else.5 Randy returned to the Iowa College of Law as a faculty member in 1973, just two years after receiving his degree.
Given the breadth of Randy's talents, it is not surprising that from...