Jack Heinz

Jack Heinz, also known as John P. Heinz, has written on a variety of subjects: farm price supports (Harper's Magazine, Yale Law Journal); boxing (Sports Illustrated); modern art (Bruno David Gallery, Duane Reed Gallery); 19th century American history (U. of Illinois Press); classic jazz (The Hudson Review); the legal profession (university presses of Harvard, U. of Chicago, and Northwestern); and political violence in the 1960s (Deeds Publishing).

He is descended from Yorkshiremen, Dubliners, and Franconians, farmers, glassblowers, carpenters, and undertakers. All of those ancestors had something in common: their progeny settled in one small town in central Illinois, Carlinville, and stayed there. His family's melting was done within a very small pot.

He is the Owen L. Coon Professor Emeritus at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law, an affiliated scholar at Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research, and a former executive director of the American Bar Foundation. In the early 1960s, he was an Air Force officer, serving in both the Pentagon and the White House.

When he began his academic career, all Northwestern law professors had bronze nameplates on their office doors. Bronze. Cast, not painted. Faculty did not often move from school to school in those days. The nameplates were a foot or more long, depending on the number of letters in the name. The honorific was "Mr." or "Mrs.", not "Prof." and certainly not "Dr." Law professors were lawyers. He still has the bronze Mr. Heinz in his basement (along with much else).

He received the Kalven Prize of the Law and Society Association, the Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award of Washington University, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice, and the Superior Achievement Award of the Illinois Historical Society, and delivered endowed lectures at Cornell, Washington University, and the University of Georgia.