Laurence S. Moss, 1944-2009

I Introduction SHORTLY AFTER Larry Moss's death, his widow, Widdy Ho, suggested that I write a memorial essay on Larry. My initial reaction was that I could not produce an adequate paper on Larry in a few months, especially with my worsening health problems. On the other hand, I knew Larry quite well and while we occasionally encountered rough going in our relationship as scholars, we appreciated and liked each other, so I was a logical choice, one of several. It would be difficult to turn Widdy down and I obviously did not. Larry and I were, in fact, good friends, even though we, with our wives, saw each other only at the annual conferences of the History of Economics Society and during 2000-2003 at the annual meeting in New York City of the Board of Directors of the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation. Even when we disagreed on economics, we appreciated and respected each other. We could disagree--the point to which I have been headed--and did so candidly and in strong, vigorous terms. I confess without serious reservation that I likely was the more outspoken and harsher of the two of us. I think that Larry, too, felt that I was less restrained in my language and/or positions than he. Each of us was eclectic. I do not know which of us was the more eclectic or more open; eclecticism and openness, however, neither explains nor condones the use of strong commentary. Larry received a law degree (J.D., 1986) from Suffolk University Law School 15 years after being awarded his 1971 doctorate from Columbia. He may have become more open and more eclectic than he had been earlier; I do not know. I never intended, however, to be unkind in my comments to him. I regretted the occasions when he took offense, and rightly so, at (what he thought was) my position or how I phrased it. Larry and I both misunderstood each other; we were both, as he put it, testy but, in my view, I went beyond Larry in testiness. After giving the matter some thought and looking through my files I concluded, and Widdy agreed, that a paper presenting the correspondence between Larry and I might be useful to others. The quoted materials have been lightly edited by me, principally for typographical errors and clarity. Certain relevant material is found in Larry's c.v. The following information is relevant to the problem taken up in this article. Samuels to Widdy Ho, April 6, 2009 Dear Widdy: Thanks for your call, for this further e-mail, and for Larry's c.v. I now feel more comfortable in agreeing to prepare a paper for the 2009 HES memorial session, to go into the January 2010 AJES. I found some correspondence between Larry and I. We certainly were frank with each other! I also found that between the correspondence and manuscript material in my files we read, or read and discussed, not casually, well over a dozen of our separately authored writings. Above all, I do not understand how I could be even the slightest degree critical about anything with someone who said, in his HES presidential address, such wonderful things about my initial article on the legal-economic nexus. I once was involved at a meeting of the Association for Social Economics when the late John Elliot was being honored. I said that, at a time when we had not yet met, he had edited a reader for use in the Principles of Economics course. The first group of three readings comprised excerpts from Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and me. I said then that John could do no wrong! The same rule should have applied to Larry. I think that Larry's strong Austrian leanings may have blinded me to the fact that we both worked principally in the same two fields: the history of economic thought, and law and economics. He several times mentioned that he felt denigrated by other Austrians for his failure to agree with them on everything Austrian. I responded that I was treated similarly by some institutionalists for the same offense. …