I was in a bookstore the other day standing in front of a rack of books when I suddenly thought of Ronald Boyce. Boyce is gone now, but I remember Dee Benson saying that when Boyce was working at the federal district court in Salt Lake, the other judges would save themselves (or their clerks) a trip to the library by stopping in to ask him to help resolve a case. He was, according to Benson, a comprehensive encyclopedia of criminal law—and not just American law either, but he knew details from every jurisdiction in the world.
That story may be apocryphal, but it is certainly true that when Professor Boyce passed away his widow donated his entire personal library to the University of Utah. When the library staff arrived to catalog the collection, they discovered that the Boyce home was bulging with books—there were tens of thousands of volumes. I remember thinking at the time that the total equaled one book for every day of Boyce's life. Even more remarkably, his family testified that he'd read every book. I'd hate to think that the house was full of books only about crime. Better to think that Boyce was a polymath, and that he read books about everything there is. Anyway, in his honor, I've added his textbook to my reading list for the month. Boyce may have had it memorized, but I'll need to see the actual printed pages.
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